Puppet Show
by TheFourthMuskateer
Summary: The orphan, Jack, and his brother find out that Fredbear's family diner is not so family friendly anymore when they find shelter in the restaurant. Meanwhile, Elaina is hired to work on the diner's mascot, but fears she might be in danger when one of the diner's owners sends her cryptic messages. (Loosely based on FNAF's lore. A prequel to the ongoing story, 'Graveyard Shift')
1. Jack's Hope

It was very early morning. My brother, Adam, and I woke up extra early today to see the sunrise. We were on our favorite rooftop hangout waiting for the big light in the sky to come out over the hills, when my brother brought it up again. "What were they like?" He asked with extreme longing in his eyes.

"I told you a million times… I can't remember". According to my very likely mathematical estimation, I had lied to Adam one million times. I actually remembered a lot about my parents and that's exactly why I didn't want to talk about it with my younger brother. I wanted to save him the pain. He didn't deserve it. "Hey, Jack! There it is!" Yelled Adam. This caused me to get snapped out of my deep thoughts. I then proceeded to get lost in all the colors of the red morning sun.

We could see the whole town from our hideout. I called it "toproof". I know it's not a very creative name, but hey what do you expect from a minimally educated 18 year old and his brother. I was never the creative type, but I definitely was a dreamer. We'd been using this hideout ever since we'd escaped to this town about half a year ago.

It was the perfect place to hide 'cause an officer wouldn't think of looking on the roof of the town's most prized dinner: Freadbear's. We snuck in around three or four times a week to get things like food. The restaurant was almost always packed, so it was pretty difficult. Every single supply run went the same way. I would disguise as an employee, run into the kitchen and pretend I was serving Adam, who was disguised as a kid.

I actually think the place itself was quite nice despite being a little small. It was a tourist attraction for our small little town. It had some kind of robot mascot called Freadbear that would serve you food. I'd overheard some people talking about Fredbear being the latest in robotic technology. But if you asked me, I would've told you that it's kind of unsettling to have a lifeless robot act so…..alive.

Life on toproof was kind of complicated. I wouldn't be able tell you how many times we would have to pack up all of our gear and hide behind those big steel vents coming out of the ground whenever someone would come up to the roof for whatever reason. We hadn't experienced a winter there yet and we hadn't planned ahead for the bitter chill that was eventually to come. So I guessed that would be quite a difficult time as well. Our biggest fear was to be caught by a copper.

If we did, we'd probably be separated and be brought back to those dreaded homes. I didn't want that for my brother. When my brother was old enough to withstand such a journey, we escaped from our old orphanage to this town. Since we had no parents, cops would legally be obligated to bring us back to any home. Not mention the amount of things we had to steal to survive. I would be severely punished.

Before my parents died, I was an extreme goodie two shoes. I wouldn't dare to not follow follow the rules. Most people have stories about how they accidentally stole things as kids, but not me. It seemed like my moral compass started working a bit sooner than everyone else's.

"Is today a food run day?" Asked Adam. "Please tell me no! I hate food runs," he continued. "I hate 'em too, but we gotta do it. We're running low on food," I said. "But I don't know how much longer I can go on cheap pizza and dry veggies," Adam complained. "Well at least we got clean water, unlike our last temp home. I'm still tryin' to clean the taste of river water outta my mouth," I explained.

Adam muttered something unpleasant under his breath. I decided to console him. "Don't worry...one day we'll get outta here. One of the only things I remember about our mom is that whenever times got tough, she would tell me about a place called Atopal. There you'd live a big and fulfilling life. No one can hurt you there. Everyone's your friend. There are no coppers there 'neither 'cause no one commits any crimes. Fresh air and green hills are the norm. She told me the only way to get there was to keep walking north. One day you'd get there. "Do you see it, Adam?"

"Is this place actually real?" Said Adam. "I dunno… I like to believe it is. It gives you hope. You know what mean?" I asked. "Hope for what?" Adam asked. "A better future. For me and you. If you close your eyes and dream, you might be able to picture it." "So you really think it exists?" Said Adam doubtingly.

"One day i'm going make the journey to figure it out. You can come too if you want," I said. "When is this journey going to happen?" Asked Adam. "Just you wait kid. When I somehow get enough money i'm buying two tickets to Canada. We'll find the northern haven called Atopal."

I started out only trying to give hope to Adam, but I ended up believing in Atopal myself. Or at least it's ideas. Whether it was exactly how my mom described it or not, I knew there had to be a place like Atopal. Wherever it was, I was going to get Adam there even if it killed me.

It was finally time to get on with the whole food and water stealing thing. I was able to get my hands on an old employee suit and I went out into the main room in Fredbear's. The place was essentially one big party room with a stage that the golden bear, Fredbear, stood on. Fredbear was programmed to come off stage and serve the birthday kid and their guests. The only other rooms were an employee's lounge area with a connected storage room, a kitchen, restrooms and an office.

Today the diner was less packed than usual. Adam sat at the table furthest away from the stage. It was in the corner of the brightly decorated room. I walked up to his table and I pretended to ask for his order. If anyone else was sitting at that table, it would've looked pretty strange to ask for that many bottles of water. I brought back my little brother's large order and told him to sneak back to toproof with the supplies. I told him I would be right up. My brother went on his way and safely made it back to toproof.

Suddenly, some officers burst into the building saying they were looking for two runaway orphans who were last seen around this establishment. I recognized the cop. I had a run-in with him a week ago when I managed to get my hands on some money. I tried to buy some food and I was accused by this officer for stealing the articles I bought. It's true I do look kind of shady, but he had nothing to go on. It was then that he figured out I was an orphan who had ran away from his last foster home. I ran away fast and he somehow didn't catch me.

I was worried he would catch me so I ran to the employee's lounge and put my ear up against the door. "Oh well th-that is quite astounding," said a tall somewhat nervous looking man in a business suit to the officer. "Yes Mr. Leymour, it is quite troubling. I've been searching for him and his brother ever since I saw the older one STEALING food from a drugstore," said the officer. "Well i'm very sorry about that J-Joe, b-but I tell you, I have not seen anyone or a-a-anything s-suspicious in here. If I did Fred-d would have me fired very quickly," said Mr. Leymour. "Is something the matter?" Said Joe. "N-no," responded Leymour. "Well I hope you don't mind if I have a look around. There's obviously nothing wrong in this main room so i'll just check the kitchen and the employee lounge and be on my way," said Joe.

I began to freak out. I was walking towards the door to the storage area, when I realized that another employee was in the room watching my frenzy. As I got in the small storage area, I put my finger on my lips and signaled the staff member to stay quiet when Joe came in to investigate. He nodded his head with a friendly grin on his face and I shut the door.

I tiptoed to the back of the dark room as I heard the employee I saw being questioned. He lied and said he was the only one in the room and he hadn't seen anyone else come in. I had my back to the wall while staring at the door. If I saw that door move, I would hide behind anything I could find. I saw a flashlight resting on a closed box. I picked it up, turned it on and began searching for a better hiding spot. I heard the officer heading towards the storage room door.

Sweat began trickling down my forehead. I turned my flashlight towards the back wall and my heart nearly skipped a beat. Sitting straight up on a shelf, was a creepy-ass puppet. It had a white face and black eyes with what looked to be two purple tears streaming down it's face. "shit..," I muttered under my breath. The door began to open and I thought fast. I quickly grabbed the puppet, jumped in an open box and put the puppet over the box so Joe couldn't see it's contents. The puppet smelled old and unused.

Joe left after searching a bit in the back room. I got out of the box and muttered "thanks creepy puppet." Just looking at that thing gave me shivers. That puppet had saved me. There is much irony in that fact.


	2. Elaina's Book

**January 6th 1974: Entry #1**

I don't really know what to write in this book. I guess I could start with my name. I'm Elaina and I was given this book to write in and fill up with things that happened in my day. I'm gonna be doing this for a full year, so sorry to whoever is actually going to have to read this whole thing. I was told by my "therapist" that this book would help me pick out what in my day was…..normal. I know that probably doesn't make much sense right now, but let me explain.

It all started when I was 14. My little sister, Vanessa, and my parents were all on a picnic at our nice secluded spot right at the peak of a sheer cliff in Hilmak park. These picnics were our family tradition. Every Friday was my only chance to actually get attention from my parents. Now I know you've probably all heard the whole "i'm the oldest, so I don't get any attention" thing before, but i'm serious. Most of the time I was straight up ignored by my old folks.

Okay, i'm done rambling. Time to get back to the story. Vanessa was talking up a storm, like always, while I was staying awkwardly silent. I was blowing my only chance for my parents' attention. It's just that I couldn't bring myself to say anything to the people that I hadn't extensively talked to all week. I looked for something to say, but every time I thought of something, I was stopped by Vanessa's bragging about how she won an award or something stupid like that.

"I got A+ on my science," I said after I finally decided to talk. Then I realized that my parents wouldn't care about such an achievement. They weren't scientists. They were artists. My mom was a painter and my dad was some famous singer back in the day.

"And why would we care?" Shouted Vanessa. "I dunno. I just thought you'd wanna know…" I whispered with a voice decreasing in volume as it spoke. "Well, we don't," explained Vanessa. I found it astounding that my parents weren't piping in. Was something wrong with them?

"You know what? What if I don't care about your achievements?! What if I don't care how you won an award for the billionth time?!" Something suddenly clicked in me and I began lashing out at my sister for the life she'd stolen away from me. As the intensity of the battle increased we both got up and began physically attacking one another. Could you blame me? She was being a real bitch.

So as you can expect, we continued to fight while my parents watched and said nothing. Then suddenly, something happened. A large stone came flying from out of the forest behind us. It hit Vanessa square in the head. She stood there, swaying, before finally falling to the ground accompanied by a loud thud. The now bloodstained stone flew straight into my hand afterwards.

It turns out that the rock actually hit Vanessa right in the temples. She had to go to the hospital for it. My parents were very angry with me because they blamed me for her injuries. They believed the rock flying into my hand meant that I somehow found a way to influence that rock to hit my sister. This was a ridiculous assumption. While I still couldn't explain how it happened and who threw the stone, I know I didn't do it.

When I turned 15 I had a strange dream. The dream started out with me in a forest. My vision was blurry and misty. I could only see in black and white. I saw an opening in the trees. There was a picnic table with a basket on it, but no one seemed to be eating there. Suddenly, a fully black humanoid figure began walking towards the table. The figure seemed to notice my presence and look my way. A shiver was sent down my spine. The way that "thing" just stared at me. I felt the need to protect myself. So I picked up a stone and threw it directly at the figure. The second the rock hit the humanoid thing, it dispersed into black smoke and the whole scene changed.

The rest of the dream came only in flashes. I can't remember much of what I saw. I remember seeing me with a book written in a language I didn't know. I also saw a dark room with four bodies laying on the floor, a somewhat ragged looking boy handcuffed to a pole and a man dying with a golden key in his hand.

It was only until after I woke up that I realized the first part of the dream was reflecting the events at the dreaded picnic. After seeing these things in my sleep, I kept having dreams that would reflect past events, but from a different point of view. When I told my parents, they thought I was quite strange. My parents believed it was a sign from the underworld that I was being "claimed." Whatever that meant. Did I mention my parents were complete lunatics? They always believed anything they heard. And since they hung out with strange people, they believed in pretty strange things.

ways, my parents set me up with many therapists to help get rid of my strange dreams. The therapists believe it's a strange mental disorder, but I know that I'm not crazy. I see things. Some of the events I've seen in dreams have actually come to pass exactly the way I dreamt them. Therapists tell me to keep a record of everything that happens in my day so that they'll know if my dreams are actually reflecting past events perfectly. I also need to keep a record on all of my dreams. So that brings us here. To my very first log in this book. I'm now 19 and i'm still having those dreams.

I've gotta get to bed. It's getting pretty late and I start my new job tomorrow at a place called Fredbear's Family Diner. If there's one thing i'm good at, it would be mechanical engineering. That's why I've been hired to update Fredbear, the animatronic animal, with some interesting new traits that could only be implemented by someone of my expertise.

Well this has been Elaina. Signing off.


	3. Jack's New Job

**Note: Oh man! Chapter 3 already! Before I get into it, I've got a few things to say. First of all, thank you for all the support I've been getting! Only a few kind words are enough to keep me motivated. Secondly, I think you all are going to like this chapter because this chapter is when we finally get into things. Be forewarned though, this chapter does bring up a lot of new questions that will be answered in due time! Bear with me. :) **

After nearly avoiding being caught by a law enforcer, I carefully walked towards the exit of the storage room; still worked up from what just happened. I quickly and stealthily made my way to the office in the back of the store. Inside, I pulled on a rope which revealed a ladder going up to a room with a single door. I climbed the ladder, jiggled the door's doorknob, and kicked the door open.

There my brother was, chugging down our water supply as if he'd been lost in a desert for a solid week. "Where have you been!?" Asked Adam worriedly. "You're lucky I'm not being hauled away by a cop." I said, justifying my lateness. "You almost got caught!?" "Yeah. I hid in the backroom." I began.

"If it wasn't for that weird puppet and-" "Me," interrupted a young man in a Fredbear's uniform. "You!?" I yelled with a stunned tone to my voice. "Please don't tell-" "Don't worry. I just followed you here 'cause I was curious. That's it. I ain't gonna report you guys or anythin' like that, but what exactly are you doin' up here?" The man said calmly.

"Don't trust him, Jack! He's probably an undercover narc or something!" "Narcs are for drugs, Adam," I explained with a sigh. "What do you want from us!?" I asked apprehensively. "Nothin'...god...What's wrong with you? I just wanted to know who you were and why you were running from a cop." He said while trying to hide the fact that he was getting nervous. I can be pretty intimidating when it comes to protecting my brother. After all, he's all I got.

"Why did you help me?" I asked, still very apprehensive. "Alright... I guess I'll go first in this little question period we got going here," said the man sarcastically. "I guess you looked innocent enough. I know more than anyone else what getting chased by a cop is like…" The guy seemed to get lost in his thoughts.

"That doesn't seem like much of a reason." I said in order to break the silence. But don't get me wrong! I'm still very thankful!" I said with gratitude. "By the way, my name is Jack and this is my brother, Adam. What's your name?" I asked curiously. "It's Dave, but most people just call me Davey," said the worker.

"Now it's your turn to give answers! First of all, why were you running from a cop?" Davey wondered. I thought of lying to him, but I decided against it because he seemed like he was most likely a good person. He had saved my ass, after all. "Well….both our parents died. Ironically, they were a police officer duo…..they were killed on the job while dealing with an A-list criminal…," I said while recalling that horrible phone call that delivered the news when I was only 5. " And since we had no known relatives, my one year old brother and I were put into the foster care system. We hated it there. We knew there had to be something more to life. So one day we escaped the orphanage and ended up here. We'll be taken back to a home if one of those officers catches us. We live up here for now," I quickly summed up.

"Wait a second! Are you the mystery employee we keep seeing sneak into the kitchen and come out with tons of food?! The guys and I called you Scruffy. We've been trying to figure out who you were for a while now!" Said Davey as if he had found a cure for cancer. I thought I had been a bit more sneaky than that, but it seemed the Fredbear workers recognized me on more than one occasion.

"So you've been living up here!?" Asked Davey with slight concern. "...Yeah..." I said, feeling kind of embarrassed. "Well why didn't you come see me!? Said Davey with a "duh!" expression on his face. "If you'd a just showed yourself, Hector woulda taken you both in." Davey continued. "Come, I'll introduce you to the guys! They'll flip when they learn Scruffy and his bro 'ave been livin' on the damn roof the whole time!" Davey said with a slight chuckle. "Who's Hector?" I asked. Instead of answering me, Davey signaled for Adam and I to follow him.

He brought us down to the employee's lounge. The lounge had a circle shape to it. It had a round couch hugging the wall to the right and a bar in which Davey was already fixing himself a drink at to the left. Behind the bar, I saw what looked to be a bed, which I found to be a strange furniture choice for a lounge. The room also had a big empty rack on the back wall, where I assumed employees would hang their uniforms at when the end of the day came. The rest of the room's decor consisted of randomly placed bean bag chairs.

My brother and I took a seat in the middle of the round couch, when Davey walked across the messy, yet cozy, room and rung a bell hanging next to the door. Suddenly, a bunch of young-looking guys came stampeding into the room, quickly filling up the space. Davey shouted for everyone to get quiet as he took a seat next to us. "I'd like you guys all to meet Jack and his brother." Davey said to the room filled with around thirteen guys.

"Wait a sec…..Scruffy, Is that you!? Davey, you actually found him!?" called out a guy sitting on the far right of the couch. "And to think you ever doubted me, Scraps!" Davey said with the notorious grin he had on ninety percent of the time. "Well, damn!" Cut in another guy sitting in a bean bag chair to my left. "Guess I'll get you that money tomorrow, Nightly," said the guy while sinking in the chair defeatedly.

"Sunnly, you bet on whether or not I could find Scruffy?" Davey said. "But _I_ had your back, man," said Nightly. "So who exactly _is_ Scruffy and his bro?" Said Scraps. "Well they're orphans who've been livin' on the roof of this place for a while. Jack and his brother 'ave been sneakin' in and stealin' our food. But I don't blame 'em. They were just tryin' to survive," said Davey.

"You should take 'em both to see Hector. He'd know what to do with 'em." said someone who was mixing himself a pretty complicated drink at the bar. "I was gonna do that after you guys introduced yourselves like polite new friends would do." "Oh yeah! Umm… I'm flash!" Said the guy at the bar. "We call 'em that cause he can't shut up. You know, like thunder in a lightning storm," whispered Davey to Adam and I.

"And I'm Scraps. All you need to know 'bout me, is that if I'm talked to when I'm working on my machines, I _will_ kill you," said Scraps darkly. "He's serious about that one," added Davey. "I'm Sunnly and the one who won the bet is….. Nightly," said Sunnly while pointing at Nightly from the opposite side of the room. Using what I gathered from their names, I figured Sunnly and Nightly were polar opposites.

After Davey introduced me to everybody, most of the guys cleared out of the room to get back out and do their jobs. "Hey, Davey! Hector is probably still a bit on the stressed side, so today might not be the best time to see him," said Scraps on his way out. "Oh yeah... He's right," agreed Davey. "Who's Hector and why is he stressed?" asked Adam curiously.

"Well, Fredbear's was started by the three brothers of the Leymour family. Hector bein' one of 'em. At first, Fred, another one of the brothers, took the lead on the project and now proclaims himself as the owner of the place, even though he's become the least involved in the diner. Now the diner is losin' lots of costumers and Fred is holdin' Hector responsable," explained Davey.

"Hector is also dealin' with his brother, Mr. Leymour, who never goes by his real name for some reason. Hector and I think Leymour isn't sane anymore. He goes on and on about how he hears voices that tell him to do things. Leymour has been botherin' Hector about it for around half a year now," continued Davey.

"How do you know Hector this well?" I asked. "Well….when I was sixteen, I ran away from home. The very same night I ran away, Hector found me shiverin' in the cold. He brought me back to his diner and I told him what happened," Davey said in a tone opposite to his usual upbeat spunk. "Why did you run away?!" Asked Adam. Davey completely disregarded my brother's question.

"Hector came up with an agreement; he would let me sleep here if I would watch the store at night. I would also have to work day shifts too sometimes." Davey said with an absent look in his eye. I imagined he felt kind of ashamed to admit that he was living in a diner. "Why _did _you run away?" I asked again. I was curious why someone would leave their family. I would've given anything to see my parents again. "I'm NOT going to answer that, so stop asking! I don't need to talk about it!" Davey suddenly yelled. "Grab yourselves uniforms and get to work... I'll tell Hector that you're workin' here. That way he'll let you stay here 'till he figures out what to do with you…..You can sleep on the." Said Davey before angrily storming out of the room.

"That was strange" said Adam, stunned. "Go get our stuff from toproof," I said. "Jack, are you sure we'll be safe here. What if that cop comes back? What if Hector or Leymour don't approve of us? What if-" "Enough questions, Adam! You have to learn to be grateful for what you have! We're lucky Davey was kind. Stop trying to find something to worry about!" I snapped. "...Alright….I'm going…." Said Adam quietly on his way out.

I picked up a spare uniform, put it on, and stepped out into the kid-filled party room. As I walked out, I realized I had no employee training, but that didn't matter because I saw something in that same moment that would end up changing the course of my life forever.


	4. Elaina's Admirer

**Chapter 4, guys! We're chugging right along through this story. Just a warning: this chapter is a bit long, but things start getting real this chapter. As always, any and all constructive criticism is always appreciated. *P.S: I will probably start updating this on a consistent schedule. It will probably be updated once a week on Saturdays or Sundays. **

Elaina refused to be late for her first day on the job. She was stubborn like that. Another thing that was interesting about Elaina, was that the universe seemed to be out to get her. She was the most unlucky person she knew. Perhaps she had smashed a mirror using an open umbrella in her living room all while carrying a black cat. But not only was the universe out to get her, but also it's inhabitants. Not many people seemed to like her very much, but then again, in all her nineteen years, she didn't seem to like many people either. She believed herself to be the very definition of a hardened person and she wasn't exactly thrilled about this.

Elaina lived in an apartment alone near the campus of Hilmak University, where she was studying in mechanical engineering. Right when she turned eighteen, Elaina got the hell out of her old home. Her sister was probably the worst sibling you could have. Her parents loved her, but rarely showed it because they were too busy with their precious Vanessa. The only thing Elaina had over Vanness was her expertise in building machines. Robots specifically.

So you can imagine how happy Elaina was when she learned that a diner using new technology in the industry was opening up in Hilmak. She applied for a job there and they accepted her quickly. She was excited to work with their animatronic and see how it worked, even though she wasn't a big fan of smaller children.

She was very angry at herself for arriving late. She found a parking spot and walked towards the surprisingly grey building. For a kids place, she thought the outside looked rather dull, other than the colorful sign reading "Fredbear's Family Diner" and a cardboard cutout of Fredbear next to the door. She read the words on the sign aloud. She got a weird feeling from this place. A part of her brain said she shouldn't go in and if she did, she would eventually regret it. But the other part of her brain told the spooky and mysterious part to shut up.

She went inside to see a young employee behind a counter with a drink in his hands. He had long brown messy hair going in many different directions. He had blue eyes that matched his red and blue uniform. Elaina found that the guy looked more like he worked at roller rink than at a diner. "Hello there! How are you doing! Have you come to reserve a birthday?! Or are you one of those weird people who lures children away!?" Said the man.

"Ummm, no I'm actually-"

"Just pulling your leg! I totally got you! Hahahahahaha!" The worker said while cracking up. Elaina found this to be a bit unprofessional and she was told by her "therapist" to avoid people like that.

"My god, Flash!" said another similarly dressed worker who came rushing after seeing what…"flash" had done.

"Sorry…" said Flash quietly.

"Sorry about my friend here! He's not usually the one greeting customers. His high energy is reserved for the kids," apologized the employee.

"Now go make yourself useful and get back in there, Flash!" said the boy sternly.

"Sorry, Nightly…" Said Flash on his way back to the group of kids being served by Fredbear. Elaina found that bear to be very well crafted and extremely ahead of it's time.

"Welcome to Fredbear's Family Diner!" Nightly suddenly began. "A magical place for kids and grown ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to-"

"I'm here to see Fred Leymour," interrupted Elaina.

"You could of let me finish the intro I can up with…," mumbled Nightly.

"I love it!" Piped up a voice from the doorway behind me.

"Hello, Fred," said Nightly nervously.

He was accompanied by two other men. Fred was on the shorter side. He had red hair and brown eyes and was dressed in clothes that seemed a bit too casual for the owner of the entire establishment. He wore a simple blue sweater and grey Khaki pants.

"It's just the slogan we need!" Said Fred happily.

"Why thank you," said Nightly proudly.

"And you must be Elaina!" Spoke up another one of the men as he shaked Elaina's hand.

"My name is Hector and this is my other brother, Jake, but he goes by Mr. Leymour. I must say, it sure is a pleasure to meet someone with talents such as yours."

Elaina wasn't used to compliments, so instead of saying "thank you", she just nodded her head awkwardly. Hector and Leymour were dressed more like two guys at an office job, completely contrasting with Fred's constant "casual Friday" look.

They both wore business suits, Hector's being blue and Leymour's being grey. Hector had a long and bony face, but with a plump and round looking nose. His hair was covered by his blue fedora. Leymour was tall and looked to be a somewhat sombre man. He had no hat on, so his dark brown hair flowed down into bangs which covered one eye. His eyes were a very dark shade of brown, almost to the point of looking pitch black.

Elaina found it strange how many of his genetic features did not match those of his brothers. Elaina didn't catch the rest of his facial features, because, after Hector's introduction, he ran off into the main room, glancing at Fredbear carefully before making his way to a door labeled "OFFICE."

Suddenly, Leymour's quick escape from the conversation was stopped, when a police officer came into the building. He ignored Elaina, Hector, and Fred, but instead started asking Leymour questions about some runaway orphans.

"Yes Mr. Leymour, it is quite troubling. I've been searching for him and his brother ever since I saw the older one STEALING food from a drugstore," he said. The cop didn't get any useful info from Leymour, so he began searching around the place. Fred walked into the party room, dodging kids left and right, towards Leymour as Hector and I followed.

"What was that about!?" Asked Fred in an extremely worried manner.

"N-nothing," started Leymour.

"He was j-just asking about s-s-some orphans who w-were last seen in this area. He's j-just looking around," explained Leymour in a strangely nervous way.

"At least a police officer will make the kids go wild. They like that kind of stuff," explained Hector optimistically.

"How do you know him?" Elaina asked after pondering whether or not she should speak on the matter.

"W-we were old friends. Hector, I know you've met him b-before. R-remember? He's good 'ol Joe T-tameshi," said Leymour.

As Hector was trying to remember "good 'ol Joe Tameshi", Fred decided to change the subject.

"We're already losing publicity….," started Fred with a sigh. "We don't need a cop coming in here! If people see him, they'll assume the worse!" Explained Fred, stressed.

"He doesn't handle stress well," whispered Hector to Elaina.

"Fredbear helped us get through our first few years, but now we need something more….," continued Fred.

"Elaina," he said while shifting his gaze towards me. "I need you to get to work on making Fredbear better. The more advanced he is, the more publicity we'll get." He pointed towards a room next to the stage. "That's where you'll be spending most of your time, but today, I want you to see how Fredbear works. Take notes and find out what can be improved." ordered Fred.

As Joe came back out of the employee's lounge, Leymour continued his brisk walk towards the office, as if Joe was a predator and Leymour was prey.

Elaina sat at the table closest to Fredbear's stage. She felt kind of weird being bunched up with a bunch of kids. She watched as Fredbear told cheap jokes and sang songs on his own. The first thing Elaina wrote down in her "improvements journal" was a note about how Fredbear could use some bandmates or at least another character to keep him company.

Fredbear abruptly turned his head in Elaina's direction and said: "How are you enjoying your food!?" Elaina found the technology to be pretty good for a small diner. But then again, Fredbear's movements were still very robotic. Sometimes he would stay lifeless while he would keep talking and singing. It caused somewhat of a disconnect. It reminded customers that Fredbear was never actually alive. He was only a cold and lifeless machine.

Elaina wrote something about better mouvement, but she didn't think this was a thing she could fix. The technology just wasn't there yet.

Elaina suddenly heard the sound of a bell ringing through the restaurant as all of the workers headed towards the employee's lounge door. Hector took a seat beside her and said; "The bell means that it's time for Fredbear to work his magic. When all employees hear the bell, they get out of the way so they can let Fredbear do his thing," Hector explained as he got up to join Fred in a discussion. Fredbear began to sing happy birthday to a lucky birthday boy as he got off the stage and, in a set direction, walked towards the kid.

Suddenly, Elaina had an abrupt idea; free-roaming. What if Fredbear could move whenever and wherever he wanted too? If she was going to do this, she would have to make Fredbear a bit more…..intelligent. She would also need lots of time, but she was certain that this would make not only Fredbear known, but also Elaina's name. Her lifelong dream was to be recognized for something she had done, or at least be acknowledged for it. She refrained on telling Hector or his brothers before she had more of a plan.

Elaina continued writing in her journal about more of the technically complicated inner workings of the golden bear.

"Why, hello there," spoke a voice from behind her, half startling her. Elaina turned around to see a scruffy-looking guy wearing the diner's uniform. His dark brown hair was short in the back, but was messier and longer in the front. He had a round and soft-looking face. Elaina had to admit that he looked pretty attractive.

"What're doing?" Asked the guy curiously.

"Do I know you?" Elaina addressed.

"I'm Jack. Mind if I sit next to you?" Announced the guy confidently. Before Elaina could kindly answer "no", he sat right down next to her.

"So...whatcha working on?" Asked Jack. Elaina was starting to lose her patience with this guy. "I must say, you do look beautiful," stated Jack. If it were any other guy, Elaina would be thrilled to be recognized, but Elaina found Jack to be obnoxious and straight up annoying.

"I'm working. Please go away. Now is not the time for flirting," Elaina stated.

"Alright, alright. I'll leave…..as soon as you show me what you're up too." He said with an annoying smirk on his face.

"No! Just leave me alone, I'm trying to watch!" Elaina raised her voice.

"Watch what!? Fredbear?!" Quizzed Jack.

"Yes! I am trying to-"

"Shhhhhhh! I'm trying to watch the show!" Interrupted Jack, obviously trying to mimic Elaina.

"Could you just cut it out. Go away and-"

"Shhhhhhhh!" He cut-off Elaina again, but this time, he was twice as loud.

After about a minute of trying to ignore Jack, Elaina finally noticed that he was reading her "improvements journal" from over her shoulder.

"That looks like some pretty complicated stuff. I gotta say you're pretty smart," said Jack kindly.

"If you were smart, you'd leave me alone," Elaina threatened.

He snatched up the book and ran to employee's room. She angrily chased him into the room. She found him skimming through the pages of the notebook on the round couch. "This is really good stuff. If you published this, I'm certain it would become a bestseller!" He said sarcastically.

Elaina marched over to the couch and forcefully grabbed the book out of Jack's hand's. "Stay away from my stuff and leave me alone!"

"Seriously though, free-roaming is a pretty cool idea….What's your name?"

"Elaina," she answered with a sigh.

"I like you, Elaina."

"Ummm...thanks…"

"Are you the one who built Fredbear or something?" Asked Jack.

Elaina wondered if Jack only stole her book to get them alone together.

"Ummmmm...no, I'm new here. I got this job new job so I could work on Fredbear."

"I'm…. also kind of new here," Jack explained.

"Why are you talking to me?" Asked Elaina. She was genuinely confused that a stranger was actually curious in what she was doing and who she was.

"I guess I just wanted to talk to-"

The rest of Jack's sentence was drowned out by a large crash coming from the backroom.

"What was that!?" Said Elaina, startled.

"I dunno!" Replied Jack. Jack began tiptoeing towards the backroom door. Apparently, Elaina and Jack had been the only ones to hear the sound. Jack slowly and carefully touched the doorknob as if he had been electrically charged and was trying not to get shocked.

He decided to finally swing open the door. Jack fell over when a tall black-eyed puppet tumbled out of the doorway as if it had been leaning on the door, listening to our conversation. "What the hell IS that!?" Elaina yelled.

"It's thing again!"

"Just this morning, I saw this thing on a shelf, but who the hell moved it to the door?!" Questioned Jack.

"Maybe it moved on it's own," said Scraps as he walked through the lounge door.

"Apparently, that thing belonged to Fred's grandfather. We've got a lot stories to tell about that thing," he continued.

"I'd better go," said Elaina. She always got nervous when she was involved in a conversation that included more than one stranger. In fact, she got nervous around any stranger. That's when she realized she had been talking to a complete stranger for the last ten minutes. She ran out of the room and back to her front side table.

"See ya later then!" Yelled Jack before she left.

On her way out, she bumped into Mr. Leymour. He stared at her for a while then looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was listening.

"I've been looking for you," he said quietly. "You've got to leave while you still can…"

"Please help me. If you care about the souls of many people, you would consider listening to me. Meet me in this office here, tonight at 12:00. You're part of it all," he said, panicked. He ran off while muttering something about losing hope and not being able to escape your fate.

Elaina didn't know what to make of what she'd just heard. Leymour had to be insane. She tried to make sense of what he'd told her during the rest of her workday. She was so distracted, that she only managed to write one more note about Fredbear before closing time. All the kids sadly left the restaurant. Leaving her and a couple employee's left in the building. She didn't see Jack leave the diner, so she waited a bit for him to come out. She felt bad for running off like that and she also wanted to tell him about what Leymour had told her. After a while, she concluded that he'd already left. The lights turned off as she left the building. Hector, Fred and Leymour were probably the only people left in here. Elaina left the building while pondering whether or not she should meet Leymour.

* * *

Leymour sat in the office of Fredbear's Family Diner. A place so full of happiness during the day, turned into an activation ground for paranoia and insanity at night. A place where a pin drop could be heard. A place where something much more sinister than anyone would expect was about to happen. While Davey and Jack stayed quietly in the lounge, Leymour waited for someone to show up. There was a knock on the office door. Leymour opened it up to find Elaina standing out in the darkened hallway. "Tell me what you meant by "You're all part of it,"". He began to explain.


	5. The First Night

**Chapter 5 is a good one. It has a lot of clues to the future of this story. As always, feedback is always very appreciated :)**

"See ya later then!" I yelled as Elaina stampeded out of the room. At least I'd learnt her name from the book I stole. Now I sort of had a connection to her.

I'd never really been a romantic type. I didn't believe in love at first sight or a destined true love….at least until now. Something pulled me towards her. From the second I saw her, I felt a rush of emotion like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. It felt as if I hadn't had food for weeks and suddenly a feast appeared to me. It was an unexplained feeling that I'd never felt before.

"Hey, Scraps?" I said to the only other person left in the room. "You said you had stories to tell about that puppet…"

"Well, I do, but they're kinda stupid. Just urban legend and rumor that Davey's been spreading around. He says that Hector told him these stories, but I think he's just making' 'em up to scare us."

"Tell me," I pleaded genuinely curious. I couldn't explain why that puppet intrigued me as much as it did.

"Why do you wanna know so bad, Scruffy?" Asked Scraps.

"Well, I got nothing else to do. One: I don't have any training for my job, so how am I expected to actually work, and two: Elaina doesn't really seem to like me all that much and she doesn't want to talk….." I sighed.

"I bet she'll grow on me tomorrow….." I drifted off into my thoughts while thinking about Elaina.

"Alright, I'll tell ya!" Said Scraps, snapping me out of my lovesick daze.

Scraps began to tell me Davey's stories about the puppet.

* * *

**9:00 PM**

After a day with a whole lot of sitting around, closing time finally came. My brother, along with Davey, joined me back in the lounge before all the lights were turned off. Throughout the day, I realized that I might of upset Elaina in some way, causing her to storm off, so I felt that I shouldn't talk to her until tomorrow. I would let her cool-off.

"You guys'll be sleepin' on the couch," began Davey. "I talked to Hector about letting you guys stay."

"And?" I asked

"You're lucky I got him in a better mood than he's been in lately. He'll let you stay only if you two work here without pay, like me," Davey explained. "And, ummm, sorry about earlier today, guys. I just get real weird when I'm asked about how I ran away. It's a pretty touchy subject for me," admitted the Fredbear's worker.

"Ummm...It's alright, I guess," I said while trying to recall what he'd done wrong in the first place. The lights in the diner suddenly went out and we began seeing the shadows of the night.

**9:15 PM **

In only fifteen minutes after closing time, the building seemed to be a great fit for a haunted ghost town. The place became so silent. Not to mention the darkness.

"Can't we turn on a light for a while?" Asked my brother as he and I were setting up two sleeping spaces on the couch. "No, man, sorry," replied Davey.

"We're losing money, so Fred demands that we don't use any power when we don't need it," continued Davey.

"Alright, then…"

"Oh! I almost forgot! Just stay in here at night, ok? 'Cause sometimes Leymour stays here after hours and…...Let's just say I don't really trust the guy. He's kinda shady," whispered Davey.

"Hey, Davey? Thanks for helping us out," I said gratefully.

"It's my pleasure to help people in need," he told us with his usually mischievous smirk.

**10:30 PM**

After about an hour of getting employee training, all three of us just began to talk personally until Adam fell asleep. Something that I always admired about my brother was the fact that he could fall asleep so quickly when he wanted to. It took me a good hour to fall asleep, and that was only on a good day. I also had to use some "methods" to fall asleep.

**10:40 PM**

Everyone was silent for a while until I decided to ask Davey about the stories that Scraps told me.

"Are they true?" I asked

"Is what true?" He asked

"The stories that Hector apparently told you about the puppet. Are they true?"

"Wait a sec! Did Scraps tell ya some stories?!" He asked kind of annoyed. I nodded my head. "Great, now we've got someone else who's gonna be all spooked."

"Can you at least explain to me what that puppet really is!" I said

"Maybe tomorrow. I'm pretty tired. Workin' in this dump really takes it outta me. One day i'll get outta here. Become, like, famous or somethin'... I dunno," Davey said

"Well maybe you could come with Adam and I to find Atopal," I said before realizing that Davey had no idea what Atopal was.

"What the hell is Atopal?" Asked Davey with a slight chuckle.

"A place up north that doesn't suck… My mom used to tell me about it. It's kinda like a utopia. I dunno if it even exists, but I swear to god I will find it. For him," I pointed at the now sleeping Adam. "You can come too if you want."

"Alright. Why not? I've run away from a past life once before, so it wouldn't kill me to do it again," Davey said. "But where are you gonna get the money? Neither of us are gonna get paid to work as long as we're livin' here," he explained.

"I don't know. Just stop with the questions. I hate it when people ask too many questions," I snapped. I got like that with Adam earlier that day too. I hated questions so much. I think it was because I didn't want to accept the reality of things and answering life's questions would force me to face it.

"Sorry," I began. "It's kind of a stupid dream I have. It's a dumb idea. Just forget I ever talked about it. I don't want to give anymore false hope than I've already given to Adam," I explained.

"Hey, man. Don't worry about it. One day things'll work out. One day you could become king of this whole town. Hell, one day you could become king of the world!" Davey comforted.

"Thanks, man. I've gotta get to bed. I'm pretty tired too. Goodnight," I told him. I then pulled something from out of my backpack and started winding it up.

"What's that?" Asked Davey

"Oh, this is just something my mom gave me before she passed... When I was much younger, my mom sang me "my grandfather's clock" as a lullaby, but when she became too busy to see me before bed, she gave me a music box that played the song. Now it's the only thing I can remember her by. It helps me go to sleep," I explained. Davey quietly laughed as if he found it a little amusing that I needed a music box to sleep.

* * *

**12:10 AM**

After much pondering, Elaina finally decided to meet with Leymour. She drove up to the building in the dead of night and parked in the nearly empty lot. The only other car in the lot was what she assumed to be Leymour's. The building underwent an extreme change in atmosphere at night. She knew this before she even walked in.

She opened the door to find a darkened and soundless building. She slowly walked into the main party area. She looked around the messy room only to find not a soul in the place. She looked towards the show stage and saw Fredbear in his deactivated form. The diner was so eerie, that it gave off the strange feeling that someone was always lurking right behind, but you turn around and nobody's there. Elaina thought she heard noises coming from deeper in the restaurant, but she decided not to investigate for too long and head straight for the door to the office.

She stepped inside after glancing over her shoulder because of that strange feeling that someone was following closely behind her. She told Leymour that he needed to explain his absurd actions from earlier today.

"The only chance we have to save many lives is for you to get out of here and for you to stay away from those two boys," Leymour said in a whisper.

"Are you talking about Jack and his brother?!" She asked still very confused about the whole situation.

"No! I'm talking about Jack and that accursed Dave," he shouted.

"Who I talk and hang out with is not up to you!" Elaina said trying to keep the volume of the conversation around the whispering territory.

"You don't understand! This is very importa-"

He closed his eyes and suddenly stopped talking in the middle of his sentence.

When he opened his eyes again, they were pure white. He stared intently at the wall for a couple seconds before remembering Elaina's presence. Without speaking a word, he got up and quickly started walking towards Elaina. She backed off, very startled at Leymour's sudden change in eye colour. She backed into the hall as Leymour took a small knife from out of his back pocket. He began running towards Elaina. Very frightened, she ran back into the main party room towards the doors, tripping over her own feet. She made the last minute decision to hide in the bathrooms instead of trying to make an escape. She ran into the girl's restroom and hid inside the stall to the far right of the room.

She heard Leymour's now slower footsteps echo through the empty building. As she shook in the stalls, staying as quiet as possible, she felt Leymour's presence outside the door. Luckily, he opened the stall on the far left first and began working his way towards her's. Despite the situation, she found it to be very cliché of him to open every single stall dramatically until he found his victim. She considered crawling under the stall to get out, but it was too late because Leymour had already begun banging on her stall door, still remaining perfectly quiet. Leymour hit the door so hard that the lock gave in and the door swung open, revealing Elaina who was cowering in fear.

He held up the knife as if he was about to stab.

"Welcome to the family," he whispered.

But before Elaina was cut down, she found herself sweating ferociously in her bed. She had dreamt it all, but it felt so real. Almost too real. Elaina remembered that she decided to not meet Leymour. She was worried he would be mad about it and after what she'd seen in her dream, she was scared to get on his bad side.

She had breakfast alone in her apartment and got ready for work. Today she was actually going to have to bring her tools and work on Fredbear. It was a Tuesday after all. Fredbear's was closed on Tuesday's.

It was only when she had walked into the building that the scary truth finally dawned on her… Dreams like the one Elaina just had usually came to pass.


	6. Jack's Questions

**A/N: Sorry about the late chapter guys. This one took a bit longer to write due to my worst enemy; writer's block. Anyway, I finally got it done, so here it is. **

**Also, just to clear things up, the layout of Fredbear's Family diner is similar to the design of the FNAF 1 pizzeria. The only difference being there's an employee's lounge in between the backstage and pirate cove. The entrance is above the entrance to the bathrooms to the right of the stage. As always, feedback is always greatly appreciated :)**

* * *

**Chapter 6: Jack's Questions**

I woke up to the soothing sound of birds in the spring. At first, I was very disoriented at the immediate sight of a messy lounge. I got up and remembered the eventful day that had just passed. I also recalled meeting Davey; the young cheerful worker who had helped my brother and I out by giving us a good word in to one of the restaurant's owners, in turn, letting us stay in the diner for now. Everyone was still in dreamland, so I stood alone in the room, re-soaking-in my current situation. Speaking of current situations, I looked down at my gracefully sleeping brother's face and reaffirmed my optimistic ambitions of finding Atopal. My back felt a bit sore; probably a result of the lounge's couch lacking any sort of good potential for a nice sleeping spot. I wasn't very rational in the morning, so I took the opportunity of being alone to attempt a back massage on myself. As any sane person would expect, I fell over with a loud thud, causing Adam's eyes to jolt open after an early morning groan. Adam's rude awakening was soon accompanied by Davey's sudden escape from his own subconscious' tight grip. Davey sat up in his bed, eyes only semi-open, and looked at me now on the floor and spouted half-consciously: "The hell you doin' down there, Scruffy? Fall outta bed or something?"

I rolled my eyes after Adam lightly chuckled from his spot further down the rounded couch. "Haha! Everyone's laughing!" I began sarcastically. "I was just, ummm, stretching." Davey smirked and fell back down into his bed behind the mini-bar as if he was made of cement blocks. "And don't call me Scruffy! Call me by my actual birth name," I shouted to make sure he couldn't just block me out with his pillow. "Yeah that's great, Scruffy," Davey joked.

"Don't we have a job to do. I mean, this is technically Adam and I's first day one the job," I tried to remind the now sloth-like Fredbear worker. Adam slowly got up from the couch while starting to feel the painful blow of the uncomfortable couch. "We're damn lucky that we're closed on tuesday's," Davey yelled from across the room to signify that he was still listening. With a yawn, Adam asked for the time and I pointed at a clock above the door leading to the always-darkened back-room; facing directly across from the couch and to left of the bar. The clock read 8:14 AM. The diner opened at 8:00, so even if the place had been open today, we'd be fourteen minutes late for work.

My lack of worry for my oversleeping was soon shot down when Davey told me that employee's still had to come in on tuesdays. "Fred says we have to "bond" as co-workers. He says happy staff makes for happy customers. But I say he just made that rule so we could all suffer with him when he had to start comin' in on tuesday's," Davey expressed.

Davey took a hung up uniform from the rack on the back wall and signaled for us to do the same. Adam and I picked up our uniforms and my brother and Davey had already started changing. I, on the other hand, was pretty self-conscious when it came to changing in front of people. I used to always be mortified by the risk of not only my pants coming down, but also the next layer. I contemplated going in the dank back-room to change, but I realized that having the strange puppet watch me change wasn't much better; especially after hearing the spooky stories about the abandoned doll. So I decided to suck it up and change alongside everyone else while I thought about why the hell I was obliged to wear a uniform on a day that no customer would actually show up.

Upon hearing of closure on Tuesday's, Jack was excited to take the opportunity of getting acquainted with his new living space, but when he heard that he had to "bond" with the other staff members for the day, he was less than thrilled. Davey walked out the small door to reach the usually-party-inhabited main room followed closely by Adam. After eating a pretty stale granola bar that did not live up to the adjective of satisfying, it was my turn to walk out and join my co-workers.

The main show area was actually pretty dirty in the mornings. Did Fred's budget cuts go so far as to not only cut power supply, but also fire Fredbear's cleaners? It was obvious to me that this was a bad business strategy, I mean, if the health department saw this, they'd be shaking their heads in extreme disapproval. There was also a pretty bad stench emanating from somewhere in the place. Unamused, I plugged my nose as I walked into the dining area. I saw that everyone else was perfectly fine, so I was pretty confused that no one else was taking progressive action to stop these odours from causing a nauseated blackout. "My god! Do you guys smell that!?" I asked alarmingly.

"Oh! That's just Fredbear's smell when his….vascular tubes are being changed, or something like that. I'm pretty used to the smell," Davey responded. "You completely butchered that explanation," laughed a familiar voice coming from the stage. I turned my head and suddenly my negative outlook on the day fortunately flipped when I saw Elaina standing on stage, intensively studying a half put-together version of the diner's mascot. As I made eye contact with her, she suddenly looked away, but still acknowledged my presence with a subtle greeting nod.

"Hi, Jack," she began softly. "Don't worry about yesterday. I didn't leave because of you. I mean, you're actually pretty nice once you get past the smug annoyingness," she joked while revealing her rarely seen smile. Hearing this was a huge load-off my chest! Now that I knew she didn't completely hate, I had somewhat of a chance with her. Elaina signaled me to help her carry Fredbear into the room near the stage. Of course I would help her, I mean, as long as it made me look gentlemanly. As we lugged the bear off the stage, I was grateful that the putrid smell had finally gone away. We walked into the backstage area and laid Fredbear down on a metal table with slight difficulty. Man, that robot didn't look _this_ heavy on-stage. When Elaina turned on the light, I was impressed to see the walls lined with all kinds of tools and materials, including extra heads and parts for Fredbear.

"Thanks." She smiled at me again, which made me pretty happy. I was afraid that Elaina was one of those people who're gloomy 24/7. Sombre was not the adjective that fit my style of thinking. "My pleasure," I said with a smile of my own. She stood there silently, so I assumed that she was quietly cueing me to leave so she could do her job, so I walked towards the open door.

"Wait," she said before I left. "Shut the door. I have something serious to ask you about." I complied with her request out of half-curiosity and half-wanting-to-please-Elaina.

"Whoa, what happened?" I asked curiously. The sudden change in the tone of our dialogue warranted a very confused look on my face.

"Do you know anything about….Leymour." She gradually turned her sentence into a quiet whisper.

"Ummm...I know that he's one of the diner's owners," I said, feeling like I was answering a question on a quiz.

"Do you know anything else?" She was starting to sound straight ominous, which started to borderline frighten me. Even though I only knew her for about a day, I felt she wasn't acting herself.

"Uhhh...no. Sorry, but can I ask why you want to know in the first place?" I questioned her strange behavior.

"Well, he told me some pretty weird things yesterday and…." She trailed off which caused me to believe she was refraining from telling me everything. In fact, I was positive she was only telling me half of the truth. I had a strange talent of being super insightful, especially when it came to people lying.

"What did he say?" I asked, now trying to get the whole truth.

"He wanted me to meet him here last night, but I-I didn't and he sounded urgent and he talked about saving many souls and now I'm afraid that he's angry." I could tell she was very upset because of something with Leymour, but she was difficult to help in a state of panic like this. "Calm down, calm down," I said in an attempt to help her regain her composure. "Now just start from the beginning and tell me what happened," I said quietly.

"He said I had to-"

She was interrupted by an absurdly timed Leymour waltzing on into the backstage area. He suddenly stopped in the doorway and looked at Elaina with a fierce scowl on his face, then he saw me with her which made him only let out an anxious sigh. Elaina avoided any sort of eye contact with the tragically mysterious man. She quickly walked out of the room with the overused excuse of needing to use the restroom, leaving me alone with Leymour. He slowly walked towards me and, based off of Elaina's frightful confrontation with him the day before, every resounding step he took made me a bit more nervous for this sudden encounter.

"What were you doing back here?" He spoke with an aggressively quiet tone. The kind I remembered my dad using whenever he was so angry that he couldn't even yell anymore. "I w-was helping Elaina with Fredbear," I said timidly right after I remembered what I was doing back there in the first place.

"You're not supposed to be back here. This is only for our mechanics. You should be out on the show floor cleaning up the place. Go on. Get out there," he raised his voice to sound assertive while telling me what to do. Obviously, telling people what to do was not his strong suit, but his tone wasn't what scared me; the man himself had a creepy air about him. He somehow had the uncanny valley effect about him. Similar to the fear factor an animatronic would have on most people. "Sorry, sir. I-I'm new here," I attempted to justify.

"Oh, so you're one of those street urchins we took in. Hector told me about you. You're lucky I'm not charging you!" He snapped. Leymour walked to the back end of the room, picking up a spare Fredbear head and a good amount of parts. I was wondering why he was messing with those parts, I mean, he had just yelled at me to say this back room was for mechanics only. But I feared to question his actions as he fumble around with spare parts in his arms, trying not to drop any as he made his way to the door.

He abruptly stopped in the doorway again and made his way right towards me. He went right up in my face, spare parts in hand, and quietly whispered: "You and your friend had better stay away from Elaina or I shall be forced to take matters into my own hands. You won't be happy with the consequences."

With that threatening comment, he walked out of the room and yelled: "Get to work!"

Was Leymour so worried about my presence in the backroom that he would go so far as to order me to get to work on a day the restaurant was closed?!

"_What the hell is up with that guy?" _I wondered. Just yesterday I had seen him stuttering his way through a conversation with a cop, but today he seemed much more assertive and competent. It was either he was just really scared of police officers, or he underwent a complete personality change overnight. Still a bit shaken by Leymour's threat, I stood still for a bit trying to process what he had just told me. I'm pretty much _always thinking_ about the mysteries of the world, but this mystery of a man was just…..different. This must've been what Elaina felt when he approached her.

After my intense thinking period, I regrouped my brain cells and got back into reality; walking out onto the main show floor where I found Davey, Adam, and a couple of other employees who had arrived, cleaning up the room.

"Hey, Scruffy! Glad to see you're still with us! I'm always happy to see new guys stick around," said the guy that I recognized as Sunnly. His bright disposition was actually quite refreshing after the morning I was having. He was currently mopping down the floors in the bottom right corner of the room. Based on what I saw, the kids' messes seemed to gravitate towards that corner. But despite Sunnly's monotonous task, he seemed to be keeping his cheery smile.

"Glad to have you on board," called out another guy cleaning up a table right near Fredbear's stage. I couldn't quite recall being introduced to this guy the day before, but I didn't question it. I didn't want to sound rude in front of my new workmates.

Davey and Adam were mopping down the rest of the room while they awaited the arrival of more employees.

"Umm, hi, guys," I began sort of timidly. "How can I help in cleaning up the joint?"

"You can start by helpin' Flash clean the tables before Fred gets here. Hector had Lymoure 'ave already got here, so there's no point tryin' to impress them, but Fred gets real pissed when the place is dirty when he gets 'ere on tuesdays," Davey explained.

So I got to work on my task starting at the far end of the room working my way towards the stage, meeting Flash halfway.

* * *

A couple of other workers walked in and helped us clean up while Elaina continued work on Fredbear, making sure to avoid Leymour at all costs. Fred finally arrived in his casual attire quickly walking towards the office, only mildly showing his appreciation for our hard work with a quick nod towards Sunnly as he passed by.

Most employees had now arrived and with our cleaning task complete, we all sat around a large party table and our "bond" time began. Adam and I sat next to each other with Davey sitting on my right. I was grateful for the fact that Davey had taken it upon himself to be a sort of mentor for my brother and I. "So, how's everyone enjoying the tuesday we could be spendin' lazin' around at home!" Said Scraps while tinkering around with something in his hand. "Well I got nothing better to do," said the ignorant Adam. Upon Adam's comment, all attention was brought to him and all background conversations with the guys had stopped. I guessed they just weren't used to Adam speaking up. I wouldn't say he was the silent type, but I would say that being on the road for half a year can take it's toll on an innocent sixteen year old. He hadn't been exposed to the normal life of teenager and neither had I, so we were never exactly sure if how we felt was how normal kids with normal lives felt.

"Hey, kid! You're brother has already got a nickname, so why don't we give you one?" Suggested a bored looking Nightly to all of the guys. "Umm, alright," Adam agreed.

"How about Kidman?! You know, 'cause he's a kid and a man at the sa..." He trailed off as he realized that he had no idea where he was going with this thought. Most of the guys looked at him with the 'that made absolutely no sense' look, making Flash retreat back and slouch into his chair. I felt a bit sorry for the guy. Was he always treated like the dumb one?

"What about Minimus? It's youngest in Latin," I suggested. All the guys nodded in agreement, but not because they liked the name, but because they were probably already bored of the topic.

"How do you know that, Scruffy?" Asked Nightly with a somewhat doubting tone to his voice. "Well, ummm, when we still lived in our old orphanage, I would spend most of my time in the study learning many things from books. Including a book on how to easily learn Latin." I recalled many memories of my studies in the library. It was a passion of mine to become more knowledgeable so I could help protect Adam in any given situation. How was I expected to protect him if I was un-educated. In that moment, I thought of returning to the books to find something on Atopal. Maybe his mother hadn't been simply telling me a fairy tale. Maybe it actually was a real place I could find. I wished I had been more concerned with that when I was invested in my studies. He could always continue searching through his books, but he didn't know where to start. There weren't many books concerning the location of utopia-like places.

They continued with small talk until they were interrupted by Elaina bringing Fredbear back out on stage with Davey's help. She tested him out a bit and he seemed to be working perfectly fine. I wondered what Elaina had actually changed about the bear. He was functioning just as he had been yesterday. Elaina then took her leave for the day without so much as a wave goodbye to me. Other than Davey, she felt like my only true friend in this place, despite her attempts at keeping her distance.

Nightly's constant complaining and negative attitude had started taking it's toll on me, so I decided to take a small walk around the place and look around. I walked to the back end of the dining hall near the door to a hallway leading to the office. I sat there for a bit before deciding to return to the group until my thought process was interrupted by arguing voices from the office.

My curiosity got the better of me as I decided to walk down the hallway closer towards the office. I saw a window looking into the office and a to the left of it. I crouched under the window to avoid being seen, giving me the best spot to listen to the conversation.

"Leave them alone, Jake! They're just kids!" An unfamiliar voice pleaded. I assumed it was Hector, but I couldn't be so sure. "That's Mr. Leymour to you!" The other man replied.

"And you can't just go around letting any '_kid'_ off the street! Especially kids who will only end up causing trouble!" Leymour argued.

"What the hell has gotten into you, Leymour! You aren't usually like this!" Piped in another voice he assumed to be Fred's. "I said it when you let your precious 'Davey' stay here and and I'll say it again; find their parents and allow them be responsible for their own children!" He said aggressively towards the kind and compassionate Hector.

"They don't have any parents!" Hector snapped back. "They're all alone in this world…" Hector said, in a suddenly calm tone. "You of all people should know what that's like!" Hector continued raising the noise of the conversation back to an uncomfortably high level.

"They're staying whether you like it or not," confirmed Fred.

"No kid deserves to be thrown on the streets like they're worthless. We can't sit by and abandon them in their time of need," he continued. "Just let them be until we can find a good caretaker for them."

"They better be out of here soon. There will be dire consequences if otherwise," Leymour stated. He thankfully made his dramatic exit through the opposite door and stormed down the west hall.

I felt I had heard more than I needed too, so I headed back to the group at the table.

I was left with so many questions about Leymour's intentions. Why did he want Davey and I out of the restaurant? Why were Hector and Fred so insistent on backing me up?

Why had Leymour apparently known what it feels like to be alone in the world? But the most threatening question I had feared to find the answers too was placed in the forefront of my mind for the rest of the day; what were the 'dire consequences' Leymour was talking about?


	7. Elaina's Animatronic

**Uploading this chapter a bit earlier to make up for my lateness. Just trying to stick to the schedule. As always, feedback and reviews are always greatly appreciated :)**

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An entire month had passed since Elaina first started working at Fredbear's Family Diner. She would add features on to Fredbear like more subtle movements to make the bear look a bit less 'robotic'. She fixed things like faulty wiring, buggy audio and such; still refraining to add any extremely interesting features like the free roaming idea. Although, she had elaborated on her ideas in her 'improvements journal'. She wrote down instructions notes about how she was going to do the whole free roaming idea. She was even in the early stages of planning out a new animatronic friend for Fredbear. She hadn't come up with a name yet, but she had written down all the inner-workings for the new robot.

The last month consisted of school and working on animatronics for Elaina. There was also a whole lot of pestering coming from Jack. Elaina was starting to think the frustrating Jack had developed an unusual infatuation with her, which was kind of cool since Elaina wasn't usually given all that much attention. However, she was starting to think Jack had become a tiny bit less annoying over the last few weeks, laying off on his annoyingly bad puns and random factoids that nobody cared for.

Unfortunately, Leymour did not let up in his attempt to be as creepy and weird as possible. He had approached her twice more. The first time, he'd talked about how if Jack and Davey didn't stay away from Elaina, he would force her to stay away from them. Elaina had no idea how Leymour could pull off either of those outcomes or why he even wanted them to happen in the first place. Another strange thing about Leymour; his personality seemed to be in constant motion and even Hector, who acted as a sort of mentor for Elaina, didn't even know what was going on with him.

The second time he approached the mechanical engineer had been just a couple days earlier. He told her that her time had run out and he would begin his active assault to separate Jack, Davey and Elaina. She thought nothing of it, because, when he thought about it, Leymour wasn't really a big threat after all. If he tried to pull any sort of crazy stunt, Hector would have him out of here in no time. Especially if his intent had been to hurt Elaina. Hector grew rather protective of her and became a somewhat figure of kindness for her. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something about Elaina's sad attitude and Hector's kindness went well together.

It wasn't until today that Elaina learned what lengths Leymour would go too to enact his separation plan.

* * *

It was a Saturday. The perfect day for a birthday party at Fredbear's. The whole place was packed full of kids, a good majority of them taking part in the birthday celebration of a lucky child. They all sat at a couple of the tables near the front of the room that had brightly coloured tablecloths with 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' plastered all over it. Elaina wasn't too fond of small children, so she wasn't thrilled to have to come into work to make sure Fredbear was working fine on Saturdays. She had to do it almost every Saturday, so she felt her annoyance for little kids had somewhat faded. She was honestly not quite sure where this hatred came from. Whether it was she was jealous of the childhood they got that she didn't or the fact that they made so much noise.

She prepared to write down notes in her 'improvements journal' at the back of the dining hall with most of the children's parents making conversation as they looked on at the kids having fun. Fredbear was currently behind red curtains as the machine waited for the drapes to open so he could start entertaining the kids. When it came time to serve the party guests, Fredbear would start singing happy birthday and come off stage to give cake; a trick that would always send the kids reeling. That's exactly why she knew a free-roaming animatronic would be a hit with the kiddies.

Elaina was still not used to the roaring voices of the party and the bustling nature of the building, but she was always told to make the most out of every situation, so she watched some of the kids having fun, talking about adventures they'd been on in their imagination, playing a very unpractical game of tag, and doing what kids do. It brought a smile to her face. She saw Flash in his uniform walk out of the kitchen and right up to the party table, pizza in hand. He stumbled about on his way to the table, almost dropping the food that had just been made. When he arrived at the table, with a huge kind smile on his face, he split all of the pizza slices evenly and gave the first slice to the birthday boy and continued down the table handing out slices as if he were an entrepreneur handing out business cards; quickly and warmly. Instead of heading back to the kitchen, the messy haired boy sat down next to a little girl who was sitting on her own at the end of table. She seemed to be having not to much fun. Flash was obviously trying to be comforting to the lonely little girl.

"That boy sure does have a way with the little ones. Anyone else, and the girl might of ignored them," explained a kind voice as it's owner put their hand on Elaina's shoulder. She turned around to find Hector in his blue business suit looking out at his restaurant. "Well, I guess so," she agreed.

"How's the party been going?" Hector asked Elaina

"Going fine. Everyone seems happy, except for her." She pointed at the girl and was surprised to find she was now laughing with Flash.

"Well, would you look at that! I'm glad we got that kid on the team. He seems more comfortable with the kids than with the adults! He's got a heart of gold, that one." Flash turned around to see Hector looking at him. Hector nodded in approval and gave Flash a thumbs up. He patted the girl on the head with a smile and walked back towards the kitchen, but he was back to his normally clumsy self when he bumped into Jack as they crossed paths. Jack shrugged it off and continued on his way, while Flash entered the kitchen, dousing the room in an overpowering aroma of pizza and cake as he swung the door open. Jack was headed for one of the mildly populated tables that didn't belong to the crowded celebration, but he stopped in his tracks as he saw Elaina, and diverted his path.

"Here we go again," Elaina grumbled with a sigh.

"Oh, c'mon. He's not that bad. He just wants to know you. He wants you to be his friend," Hector argued quietly as Jack approached the moody girl.

"Sorry to bother you," he began, "but I was just curious to know what your brother's deal is!?" To Elaina's surprise, Jack's comment was directed towards Hector and not her. She was grateful for that, because he sounded quite pissed off. "Shhhh! Keep it down!" Hector pleaded. Fredbear's mechanic found this a little useless, because it was too loud to even hear Jack through all of the noise. Hector looked around as if he were some shady drug dealer looking for a new client and said in a hushed voice: "What did he do now?"

"I mean, it's not that big of a deal. Just tell him to be creepy somewhere else. He's just hanging around the kitchen waiting. It's like he's anticipating something!" The young worker complained. Elaina feared even the sound of that man's name. Ever since the dream she'd had a month ago, she'd been worried about it's events coming to pass. She tried to argue the slim possibilities of it's occurrence in her mind, but the thought just kept on resurfacing. Based on her many rapid conversations with him, Jack wasn't to fond of the restaurant owner either.

"Don't worry about it. He just get's like that whenever he's thinking about finances and such. He means well, trust-" He stopped talking as there was a sudden disorienting change in lighting, causing all the kids who were running around to stop at the nearest table and sit in silence. The place's lights dimmed as if a show was about to start. It was because a show _was_ about to start; Fredbear's show. The kids voices quickly muted as the red curtains began to open and Elaina ditched the conversation to prepare for a good long session of note writing. She installed that light fixture to make it more of a big deal when Fredbear started moving about, making the kids more prone to sit and anticipate. Looks like Elaina's idea had worked because the kids' attention was directed towards the stage.

The curtains revealed the slumped over golden robot in all his animatronic glory; his artificial fur practically glowing under the blond spotlight. He slowly sprang to life and walked downstage to reach the very front in a rather clunky fashion.

Elaina had run and seen this routine so many times, that she could repeat the entire thing word for word.

The mechanic couldn't help but follow along and mutter the words along with Fredbear.

"_Hello one and all! How are you all doing today!?_" The animatronic shouted gleefully with a goofy voice. Elaina had tried to install facial recognition software, but ended up only giving Fredbear unintentional eye contact abilities. The bear looked right at the girl Flash was trying to cheer up earlier and managed to make her smile even more.

"_Welcome to Fredbear's Family Diner! I know we're going to be the best of friends!_"

Elaina recited along with him. "And who am I you ask?! It's me, Fredbear," Elaina anticipated before Fredbear, but she was astonished to find the animatronic repeating one of his lines again and again, like a damaged audio tape. All colour in Elaina's face left as she watched the machine _she _was supposed to have in ship-shape for the party glitching out:

"_It's me," _he repeated.

"_It's me- It's me- It's me- It's me- It's me-"_

As the line looped again and again, Fredbear jerked around left and right, as if he was twitching repeatedly. Elaina could've sworn she checked his voice box just last week and it took a while for a voice box update to be necessary for function! On top of all that, no one was allowed to even touch Fredbear other than Elaina.

"_What the hell happened!? I could get fired for this!" _Elaina thought, panicked. That stupid line kept repeating, ringing in Elaina's ears.

Some older kids in the corner laughed at the technical failure, but Elaina was mortified as she saw the smaller kids looking confused beyond belief. Elaina wouldn't dare look to her left to face Hector, but she turned to Jack and he looked at her with a worried face. Fredbear's mechanic was puzzled on how she would keep the show going, but minutes suddenly stopped being hours and time was brought back to it's original state as Jack suddenly ran up on stage and saved Elaina's ass as he began improvising.

"Ummmm…," he began on stage. "My friend here is, uh, having some difficulties…" As Jack struggled for what to say in front of his audience of infants, he made eye contact with Elaina, signaling her to get up on stage and fix the machine subtly. "Well, umm, you see, Fredbear….. is, uh, a little shy in front of crowds! So why don't we let the good doctor of shyness take a look at him!" Jack got the hang of holding the show together as Elaina made a mad dash for the backstage area, grabbing a few tools while Fredbear was still stuck repeating the same phrase.

"_It's me- It's me- It's me-"_

Elaina ran on stage in character as the 'good doctor of shyness', quickly waving hello to the audience before making her way behind Fredbear. She opened up a little panel and inspected the animatronic's voice box as Jack continued his attempt to save the show.

"_Thank you, Jack," _Elaina thought, relieved. Of course, she was still worried she would get in a lot of trouble for this, but at least the quick term solution had been handed to her by Jack.

Elaina fixed the problem and Fredbear was finally able to move on with the show, interrupting Jack in the middle of his third terribly improvised knock-knock joke in a row.

"-_Fredbear! How about you hear some of my famous jokes?!" _The robot finally continued.

Jack and Elaina quickly got off stage to greet a surprisingly amused-looking Hector.

As they walked off, Elaina smiled at Jack gratefully and thanked him for saving the show.

We met the smiling Hector at the back of the dining hall and he pulled us both in for a hug. Elaina was ecstatic that he wasn't angry with her, but she couldn't help thinking that it was unusually kind behavior for an employer. Out of the three owners, Fred was definitely the most boss-like.

"I'm so proud of you two! You handled that like professionals!" He exclaimed, trying to send his gratitude while still trying to keep his voice down. He pulled away from the group hug and turned to address Elaina. "But this _is _something we must avoid in the future!" He told her, now starting to sound more emphatic. "So no more slacking off on regular Fredbear check-ups! You're pretty lucky Fred didn't see this. He'd probably have you fired in a heartbeat."

Elaina sat back down at her table feeling kind of defeated. How could a problem like this go unnoticed!? Someone had to have tampered with Fredbear, or something. There was no way a professional like Elaina would let this issue go unfixed. Suddenly, the dark truth finally dawned on the mechanic. If anybody had to do with this, it would be…..Leymour. He had said he would force Elaina to stay away and getting her fired would do just that.

* * *

Elaina continued writing notes in her 'improvements journal' until the large party finally finished. Luckily, the rest of Fredbear's cheesy show had gone without a hitch and the children were satisfied with their day of fun. The lonely little girl had even taken the time to find Flash and high-five him as a goodbye. It was a heart-warming sight to see, and Elaina's heart wasn't easily warmed.

Elaina headed for the exit, but saw Jack standing in front of the doorway. "You can't just leave!" He yelled.

"I'm happy about what you did and I thanked you for it. Now what do you want for me!?" She responded.

"I want you to stand up for yourself!" His voice diminished in pitch as he turned the conversation hush. "Look, you and I both know that you couldn't of caused a mistake like that," he whispered quietly as the restaurant was beginning to empty. "I think it was Leymour."

"So you think it's him too?" Elaina said.

"In fact, I'm almost positive it's him. So, what you're going to do is go down to the office and confront him yourself. He wants you fired, so you'd best get in there and defend yourself and prove he's sabotaging you!" The scruffy worker explained.

"But, Jack, you know I can't stand Leymour-"

"Elaina, this is important! You could get fired for this." He actually sounded genuinely worried for her. She knew Jack was right, but she just found it difficult to bring herself to

meet that psychotic man. Nonetheless, she would get fired otherwise. As that thought reached her brain, she suddenly began getting very angry. What kind of a man would try to separate people he didn't know!? What kind of a man would try to get someone fired for no reason!? What kind of a man would sabotage their workplace's main attraction!? A crazy one.

"You're right... See you on Tuesday! I've got me a mentally deranged man to talk to!" Elaina shouted, already marching down the dining area, towards the corridor.

"Bye!" Shouted the Scruffy boy as he strangely made his to the employee's lounge instead of the exit, but Elaina didn't worry about that now. She had bigger and more insane fish to fry.

She finally reached the end of the hall, fully prepared for her encounter. She stopped to recollect herself before parading into the office.

"What the _hell _did you do!?" Elaina yelled right in Leymour's face. She realized she might have been in a bit of trouble if Fred was the one hanging around the office at the time, but that thought was interrupted by the response Elaina expected to get from the diner owner; "I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about, madam." It sounded like he was telling the truth, but the girl could never be sure with this baffling man.

"You were here today! You were waiting in the kitchen, so you have to know what i'm talking about!" She spouted madly.

"I would watch my mouth if I were you!" Leymour threatened. "This is your boss that you're talking to!"

Elaina suddenly started to feel a bit less confident with the situation as the lights in the diner went out. Most people had left, so it made some sense. She realized her dream that happened a month ago was very similar in setting to the situation at hand. She was probably alone with Leymour in the building now. "_Dammit," _she thought as her palms began to sweat.

"F-fredbear. His voice box screwed up, but Jack and I fixed it before too long…. and I-I think you have something to do with it," Elaina accused. Leymour cursed under his breath upon hearing Jack's name. "Oh… I see… I know what you're talking and I have absolutely nothing to do with. Elaina, can you answer me this question; why are you blaming other people for your mistakes?" He scoffed. Now the guy was just being a straight up dick! Elaina was not only seething with anger, but also sweating in nervousness. "I could tell Fred all about this and he wouldn't be so happy." Elaina was done with this guy. She just wanted proof that it wasn't her. She didn't care if Leymour did it or not, she just didn't want to lose a job she genuinely liked. As soon as she could get some kind of proof, she could leave this unsettling place and sleep well knowing she wouldn't have to face the consequences of today's malfunction.

"Leymour, I know I had nothing to do with this! Please!" She was starting to get desperate for an answer. The longer she stayed in here, the more it reminded her of her dream.

"I need to go, so can we move this along?" Leymour said nonchalantly. Again, his personality was completely different. Now he seemed much more laid back than before, but the one thing he never let up on was his creepiness.

"But-"

"If you don't have any proof today's failure wasn't your fault, I'm gonna leave."

Elaina had nothing. She had no proof it was her. While she could tell Fred about Leymour's strange cryptic conversations, he probably wouldn't believe her. She sat speechless.

"Nothing?" Leymour said as he already began slowly walking out the door to the office. "Well then, I'm afraid you're going to have to hope Fred is gracious enough to let you stay, but he usually isn't. Would you mind locking up for me? The keys are on the desk!" He suddenly bolted out of the building, leaving Elaina alone in the dark. She heard the front door close and Leymour exit. "Shit!" She yelled throughout the empty diner to express her anger. She mumbled insults directed at the strange man as she picked up the keys Leymour had mentioned.

But before leaving, she noticed something unusual on the ground that Leymour must have dropped. It looked like a letter. Even though she wasn't the number one Leymour fan in the world, she didn't want to be too intrusive, besides, she had to get home and write up an essay for college. Nonetheless, she picked up the letter and shoved it in her pocket as she ran out of the lonely building, locking the doors as she walked outside into the crisp spring night.

* * *

When she got home, she opened the letter right away, her curiosity nearly killing her. The letter read as follows:

_Dear Mr. Leymour,_

_I have done as you said. Everything should be in order for tomorrow's festivities. While I am still not clear on why you want this, I am certain it is for the best. I'm also afraid I might have been caught during the installations, but I'm not sure if it matters much. Please send a response letter to tell me how it went. I'm also pleased to inform you that I have begun minor preparations on model B-01C. All I need now are the blueprints and I can begin my work. One day I would actually like to meet you in person and discuss what you can do for me. I no longer want any secrecy. I want to be out in the open for all the world to see. I want to meet with someone who I've learned works at your department. Anyways, best wishes!_

_ -The Student_

Just as she finished reading the letter, Elaina was disturbed by the loud sound of glass shattering coming from her small bedroom. I was in my kitchen ready to fend off any thief. I picked a broom leaning on the wall next to the door and began slowly walking towards my bedroom door. I opened the door to find the room in complete disorder, but what was more jarring was the figure dressed in all black standing next to Elaina's shattered window. The figure quickly jumped out of the window, elaina's 'improvements journal' in-hand. "Give that back!" Elaina yelled, trying to sound threatening. It was too late the figure was already long gone like the fine morning mist. She couldn't believe she had just been robbed and, in a state of shock, she looked around the room to asses the damage done.

The strange thing was, the thief only made off with Elaina's 'improvements journal'.


	8. Jack's Past

**A/N: Okay guys, just a quick note. This chapter is going to be very OC based, so if you're not a fan of that kind of stuff than sorry. It's all in the day's work of trying to make developed characters. I just felt a chapter like this was needed to get rid of the past's mysteries as soon as possible. Anyways, hope you enjoy this slightly shorter chapter :)**

* * *

I'm in my family's small apartment attempting to reach some books from the top shelf in my daddy's reading room, listening to hustle bustle of New-York's streets outside. I'm already five years old, so you'd probably think I like New York's style. But no. I'd rather have a life filled with peace and quiet. Just me, my parents, my books, and my toys. There's no way I would bring my stupid baby brother along! Because of that stupid kid, mom and dad don't love me anymore! I guess I'll just keep reading until my parents get home.

They're out on some cool spy mission and I really wanted to go, but they never let me do ANYTHING! They're capturing some guy who's been doing bad things. At least that's all my parents told me. They said his name was, like, Josh or something. I don't know and I don't care. I just wanted to see my parents' cool job, but of course they wouldn't let me. When he grows up, I bet they'll let stupid Adam go on secret spy missions with them!

Yes! It's getting cloudy! I absolutely love overcast weather! It makes me feel happy to be in a cozy little house. It's now starting to rain! I'm reading a cool book on the study of languages and how the human mind perceives different sounds as words! My parents have always told me that I have some weird capability to comprehend things most kids would be too young to understand. I also use words most kids don't even understand. Maybe all the kids at my school hate me because they're jealous of my intelligence! They probably wouldn't even know what intelligence actually means! They're all stupid and don't understand the world and it's wonders! But my books do. That's why they're my best friends instead of those idiots at my school! They could disappear for all I care! Especially stupid Brian Delansky! The amount of times he's made the class laugh at me is uncountable! I hope him and even the stupid kids he'll have die in the worst way possible! I hope they don't go to heaven either! They'll just wander around in search of a way to apologize to me!

* * *

In his somewhat sadistic rage, the infantile Jack began seething with anger. Just thinking about his tormentors made him fly into an insane temper tantrum. However, this time was different. As his anger reached it's peak, all of the books in Jack's father's study came crashing off of the shelf onto the floor without more than a movement from the mature five-year-old. Whenever Jack got really angry, he seemed to be able to change the laws of physics that any given object would follow. It was a peculiar trait about the small boy. He also had the remarkable gift of healing animals that seemed to be dying, or in some rare cases already dead. Maybe that's why his life at the orphanage would not be an easy one.

Jack spent most of his day reading while their baby-sitter attended to the two-year-old Adam. It was gloomy and overcast, but that was the way Jack wanted it. Noises from outside littering the apartment almost drowned out the sound of the old rotary phone ring. His baby-sitter was looking after Adam, so Jack took it upon himself to answer the phone.

"Ummm, hello?" The toddler said apprehensively.

"Is this Jack!?" Cried out a distressed female voice. He recognized the girl to be his mother. But why would she be calling in the middle of a mission.

"Mom?! What's wrong!?" The worried boy responded.

"My sweet, Jack… I need you to protect Adam for me, ok?" His mother was crying heavily, but sounded as if she was trying to hide it. Jack was too shocked to find anything to say. "I need you to be strong for me. Can you do that?"

"Ummm…. I guess," answered the confused child. Even using his analytical skills, Jack couldn't understand what was going on.

"I love to the moon and back." She wasn't even holding in her fierce tears anymore. The small boy even heard them fall gracefully on to the ground like a melancholic waterfall through the telephone.

In contrast to his mother, Jack stayed calm as he didn't even know what was happening.

"Ummm, I love you too, mom, but when are you gonna get home?" Jack asked innocently.

"I'm sorry to do this to you," she wept. "But I won't be coming back." Her last comment was said with extreme difficulty as if she was trying to lift cement blocks while talking

Jack was still as lost as a puppy, but his heart dropped at his mother's depressing revelation. Time slowed around the young boy as a hard reality began to dawn on him.

"Be the best person you can be for your brother. I love you both. Goodbye Jack. I love-"

The phone cut out as she debunked Jack's theory about his parent's lack of love for him just because Adam was born. That day, Jack learned that love could be shared.

* * *

Jack sat alone in his dad's study, blankly staring out a window into the streets of New York with tears in his eyes as he waited for something to happen. He didn't grasp the true severity of the situation, but he understood one thing for certain; he would never see his mother again.

He just sat there and stared for what seemed like hours. He couldn't even bring himself to tell his baby-sitter. Eventually, the sitter left after unsuccessfully trying to get me to eat dinner. Don't get the sitter wrong though! They were instructed to leave at a certain time.

"_Protect your brother."_ That's what she said. Jack was at a standstill. He wished his mom would've been a bit more specific with her instructions.

Later that night, there was a quiet knock on the apartment door. The small child finally decided to get up from his seat by the window to answer the morose knock. After the little toddler who was usually energy-filled trudged over to the door, he opened it and finally understood the tragic reality of his now darker, less innocent world. There stood a uniformed officer at the door.

* * *

"Jack, we've got people coming in today. I don't want you to show off your strange talents today. It scares people. Just let your brother do the charming," explained the women I grew to hate as we walked down a grey and stodgy hallway with my brother who I had actually grown to like. It'd been like this for five long years and I was starting to think nothing would ever change. Stupid comments like that one always made me feel like I wasn't a correct person. Sure my brother was cuter and younger so he was more able to enchant these people, but did not have to be such a dick about it. She was the owner of that god-forsaken orphanage.

"I'm sorry Jack, but she's right. Just lay low for this one, k?" Adam whispered kindly to me. I scowled at my brother, but made it obvious that I agreed with him.

"Alright fine. No one wants to adopt a crazy ten-year old anyway," I muttered with a heavy sigh.

Last time people came in for adoption, I'd done my stupid trick of bringing a recently deceased bug back to life. It was a pointless talent I had. I could only do it on bugs and small animals too. It also only worked on things that had just recently died. I dunno why, though. Maybe parts of their essence still existed in the body as the rest of their spirit was escaping into who knows where. I guess I just had the ability to recollect these fragments of spirit and re-insert them into their previous owner.

Anyway, it freaked people out; including . She didn't want this voodoo-ish ability of mine to escape into the conscious of the press. She didn't want to give her orphanage a bad name. And so, most of the time, she treated me like I was some demon child; giving me less food than every other kid, calling me names, and sometimes even going into my room and beating me when I stepped out of line. and I both wanted me out of there pronto. Adam was apprehensive to protect me against the cruel orphanage owner, but he did his part in guarding me against the other kids at the facility who would tease me and call me names like: "Voodoo king, Spiritmaster, Devil Worshiper." That last one really hurt.

I respected Adam for his kindness and bravery, but I'm still a bit confused on his reasoning for this, as I wasn't the best older brother in my younger days. Sure, I still protected him like my mother would've wanted, but I surely wasn't very warm and loving towards him. But as he and I matured a bit, I guess I'd grown to appreciate my brother as a companion and less of someone else I had to care for and risk losing. Maybe I'd started being nicer to him, but I dunno. If I was, then he was certainly returning the favour.

After passing door after door in the banal looking hallway, we finally turned left to enter a warmly coloured small room with a dark oak desk in the center. Sitting in the two chairs in front of the desk were a couple who looked to be in their mid-thirties talking amongst themselves. made her way around the desk, sitting in a black mafia-boss-ish chair, after politely greeting the guests. The couple turned around to see us standing awkwardly in the doorway. As discussed, Adam took the lead and said hellos for the both of us. They seemed like a young couple; madly in love, laughing at each others jokes, ignorantly ignoring the fact they made the decision to adopt mentally dented children.

"Jack. Adam. I'd like you two to meet Mr. and Mrs. Banacle," said Mother Gordon sternly.

"Oh please, just call your future parents by our real names!" Screeched the female as she jumped from her seat and pulled us both in for a group hug. "I'm Lily! And this is Theo! He is going to be the greatest father!" She delivered that as more of a compliment towards her partner than as a proper introduction. Theo got up and shook both our hands with a kind and warm smile. It was a refreshing thing to see this many enthusiastic people in one room at the same time. "Good day boys! Hmmmmm…. Ah yes, I see it in both of you! You'll both one day grow up to be strapping young men." The man was obviously trying to knock the gloomy look off my face, but it wasn't going to work. I wasn't even sure I wanted to get adopted.

"So…. Before we get into the logistics of it all, what would you like to know about the children?" The Matron asked with slight annoyance in his voice, as if he had spoken these lines too many times to count.

"Well, I wanna know about them! As people of society," explained Lily. Oh brother, having someone this joyful as a mother might be good at first, but I realised it might get old pretty fast.

"As always, I agree with the missus." Theo smiled at Lily and they shared a simultaneous laugh.

"Well, umm, this one's pretty cute. He's very good at public speaking, umm, he's pretty naive so he can still be raised as you would like him to be," began as as she pointed at Adam. I did not appreciate they were being talked about as if they were animals waiting to be bought. "Now this one, on the other hand-" she shifted her scowl towards me as she started. "-Is a little rascal who likes to cause a lot of trouble. He pretty much only reads, so you wouldn't be seeing him much outside of the library. Now anything else he might say about himself is false.

I grimaced at Gordon as the Banacles finally seemed to take into account my presence. Theo studied me for a good while before spouting out: "How old are they?"

"Well, Adam's about seven years and Jack is… Ten." Mother Gordon tried to reveal that information as slowly as possible. Lily and Theo looked at each other disappointedly as she explained the reasoning behind their suddenly sad look.

"We'd like to adopt Adam," Lily announced. Holy hell, it was happening again! Every god-damned time, someone wanted to adopt Adam, but not me or didn't want to adopt at all. Usually the Matron found a shred of kindness in her heart and turned down those people, explaining that we came in a pair, but this time was different. She went right along with Lily and Theo's plea.

"Well alright then, just sign these documents here and-"

After seeing a horrified look on Adam's face, I took action and stomped over to the desk, pushing through the now standing Lily and Theo. I slammed my arm straight down over the desk, directly over the adoption papers.

"Sit down immediately," muttered loud enough for only me to hear, including ferocity in her voice that would be enough to scare off lions.

I grabbed a pair of scissors from within one of the desk drawers and quickly sliced a painful wound across my arm, revealing spattering red blood. Lily gasped and shielded her eyes, while Theo snatched the scissors from my hand and yelled: "Holy shit! What the hell were you thinking!?"

I quickly waved my other hand over the wound, and it began to slowly, but surely seal up completely.

This was another one of my tricks that freaked people out the most.

Theo was watching intently at the spot where the wound was, trying to make sense of what he just saw, as Mrs. Gordon quickly took my arm and pulled out into the hall and straight back to my room, Adam following closely behind.

She threw me in as she muttered unpleasantries under her breath, Adam awkwardly making his way into the room as well. Mrs. Gordon slammed the door shut before sternly blasting out a threatening comment. "We'll talk about this later, Jack!" She yelled from the other side of the door.

"Thank you," Adam said quietly after making sure Mrs. Gordon was gone and on her way to address the Banacles. "I don't know what I would've done if I had to be taken away alone with those people."

"Ummm, don't mention it," I whispered under my breath. "I would've hate to see you go too."

The rest of that night hadn't been fun for me. Of course, the Banacles had stormed off, yelling about crazy witchcraft or something. Mrs. Gordon definitely had her say in dealing with me. She bursted into my room after her short meeting with Lily and Theo and kicked me right in the stomach, knocking the wind outta me. The beatings continued all while Adam was forced to watch. She eventually left, leaving me broken and bruised on the ground with tears in my eyes.

* * *

The years of neglect went by until Adam and I both were too old to ever have hope of being adopted. So on the night of Adam's sixteenth birthday, we fled without a trace, convinced we were prepared for the world ahead.

Little did we know at the time, we weren't even close to being ready for Freddy.


	9. Elaina's Justice

**A/N: Chapter 9 is here! The plot thickens in this one! All theses new plot points may seem a bit confusing now, but don't worry. All will be revealed in due time...in due time. As always, thanks for the support. It really keeps me going. Feedback and reviews are always greatly appreciated ;)**

* * *

"Do you know anything about this!?" Elaina said while storming into the room after slapping down an opened letter on the office desk.

"God, Elaina. Don't do that to me! You know i'm getting older and my heart can't handle getting startled like it once did!" Hector responded with annoyance, but a tint of playfulness could also be heard. "And to answer your question, no I, in fact, can't know about something that isn't explained to me."

"Then read it," she responded while pointing to the letter. She was definitely feeling a sense of urgency about the whole situation. The second Fred caught wind about yesterday's technical failure, he would certainly enact a harsh punishment being the way he was. While this letter was still good proof Elaina wasn't responsible, it still didn't point any fingers in a solid direction. If the damn signs wouldn't point anywhere else, the wind would blow them all back to her.

"What are you even doing here? You only need to come in on Saturdays and Tuesdays!" Hector questioned.

"I think I may have found some proof that I'm innocent. Leymour left it behind as he was leaving last night." It was true that she found it last night, but she wasn't really sure it actually belonged to Leymour. Although it could still very likely to belong to him, as his name was written somewhere in that letter. Hector gingerly grabbed the letter from the desk and quickly skimmed over it's contents, stopping to carefully read a couple lines.

_Dear Mr. Leymour,_

_I have done as you said. Everything should be in order for tomorrow's festivities. While I am still not clear on why you want this, I am certain it is for the best. I'm also afraid I might have been caught during the installations, but I'm not sure if it matters much. Please send a response letter to tell me how it went. I'm also pleased to inform you that I have begun minor preparations on model B-01C. All I need now are the blueprints and I can begin my work. One day I would actually like to meet you in person and discuss what you can do for me. I no longer want any secrecy. I want to be out in the open for all the world to see. I want to meet with someone who I've learned works at your department. Anyways, best wishes!_

_ -The Student_

"Who is the student?" Hector asked, looking up from the letter to face the burdened Elaina. "And what is model B-01C? And how does Leymour know this person? I'm sorry Elaina, but I'm not sure much of this can be linked back to Leymour being the culprit. Except for the part about wanting to meet someone who works here." Elaina began tuning Hector out. Something about that letter suddenly struck her as somewhat familiar. It's as if she forgot what she was going to say, but was on the verge of somehow blurting it out anyway. "I'm afraid this raises more questions than it does answer them-"

"Wait!" Elaina interrupted as she finally deciphered an important part of the message. "B-01B is Fredbear's model number. If another animatronic was made for this establishment, it would be numbered as B-01C." Elaina still wondered what ever happened to model B-01A, but she only questioned it for a mere moment.

"Okay then. I guess this _can _be linked to our establishment," Hector chuckled. Elaina was convinced Hector wouldn't take many things too seriously if his life depended on it. Sure it was nice at times, but most of the time, it was quite annoying.

"This letter could be suggesting that Leymour is commissioning this "student" to make another animatronic for this place!" Elaina epiphanized. "That would also explain the robbery yesterday night!"

"Wait, robbery!? You got-" He was interrupted by Elaina's eagerness to explain more, but not really to Hector, but more to herself, as if he wasn't even in the room anymore.

"The thief only stole what they came for; my 'improvements journal'. That book is chock-full of designs, innerworkings, and schematics for a new animatronic. That bastard Leymour! He thinks he can just go up and steal anything he wants!" Elaina exclaimed.

"Hey now! You still don't know for sure he went as far as to steal anything!" Hector boomed a bit protectively of his brother. "Trust me, I've seen Leymour! He always used to be, while still a bit sombre, a kind-hearted man. He wouldn't steal!"

"Well it seems Leymour's turned over a new leaf!" Elaina bit back. Hector seemed to have regained his relevance in the conversation. She sighed as she remembered Hector still had full authority over her. Even if Fred was the one responsible for dismissing employees, Hector's kindness could reach it's limits and he could report her to Fred. It's true she had been kind of rude, but she wouldn't let go of her hunch. She knew Leymour had something to do with this.

"Look, I'm not going off of blind dislike for the guy. I have actual proof." She began again, a bit calmer this time. "A lot of spare parts for Fredbear have gone missing from the backroom. I even saw Leymour take an extra head from back there once. Jack was with me. You can even ask him." She sounded almost desperate for acceptance from Hector.

"Don't worry, Elaina. I believe you. It's just, why would he be trying to make a new animatronic in the first place? Especially without your help." Hector questioned. "And why would he be doing it in secrecy!?"

"I think if we figure who his accomplice is, we might find the answer to all our questions. Who knows, it might've even been the student who robbed me. All I know is that this letter could be all the proof I need to pin this whole thing on someone else," Elaina stated.

"Wait a minute!" Suddenly exclaimed Hector. "In that letter it says the student installed something for 'tomorrow's festivities'."

"Fredbears voicebox!" Elaina and Hector both realized at the same time.

"The student also said they were possibly seen!" Elaina added. "Who could've been here two nights ago to see this person tamper with Fredbear?"

"Well, he told me not to tell you, but….. Jack, Davey, and Adam were all there that night. In fact, they're here every night." Hector admitted with a heavy sigh.

"What do you mean? Like as night guards?" Elaina quizzed genuinely confused. If Jack had been here every night, wouldn't he have told Elaina this by now. If he saw something that night, wouldn't he tell her. Especially after the previous day's fiasco.

"Not necessarily….but I guess you could look at it that way," Hector explained hesitantly. "Anyway, I'm gonna go talk to them. You stay here and-"

"Let me," Elaina insisted. "I'm Jack's acquaintance-" She thought about him for a brief moment. "-friend. He might be willing to give up more information when talking to me. Although, I haven't really talked to his brother all that much and Davey…. Well let's just say he pushes my buttons a little bit, but I'll deal with it."

"Alright then… You handle them, while I talk to the rest of the employees. I'll see if they know anything. It'd also be detrimental to know how, if this person was an outsider, they gained access to the building," Hector progressively began realizing the gravity of the situation as his playful attitude faded. It was a scary thought to be played so easily. If they were capable of tampering with their materials so simply, then who's to say they weren't capable of something a little more….dangerous. "Give me the letter and I'll tell Fred that you weren't responsible for the technical failure. Or better yet, make sure he doesn't know about it," Hector grunted as he got up from the old and worn out leather office chair. "I'll also discuss Leymour's connection to this 'student' character. But I still doubt Leymour is doing anything all that bad."

"Well, good luck with that. Leymour's probably just gonna give you some bull-shit explanation complete with prophecies and voodoo charms. He's quite a character. A character I don't fancy too much," Elaina giggled. "No offence."

"None taken. Trust me, I know he might be a little….off his rocker, but trust me, he means well."

Elaina waved her hand shyly as she shuffled out into the west hallway towards the employees lounge. Based on Elaina's dream a couple nights ago, Leymour didn't seem to mean well.

* * *

**COLD. SO COLD. IT'S AN ALMOST NAKED FEELING.**

**WHO AM I? WHAT AM I? WHERE AM I?**

**AMONGST THE SHADOWS IS WHERE I'LL BE. AMONGST THE SHADOWS IS WHERE I'LL LURK. IN THE DARK BESIDE YOU.**

**MY VICTIM YOU WILL BE.**

**SO COLD. SO COLD INDEED.**

* * *

"What news have you of the children?" Asked a quiet yet reverberating voice with a small hint of an english accent. The voice sounded somehow genderless.

"T-They are all in the same place, ready to be taken out," responded another. This one was more cowardly and stunted.

"Hush, now. You mustn't make haste. We shant destroy them, good brother. No, no. They shall destroy themselves. We must only set the chess board. Put everything in motion. Get the ball rolling. And you, sir, have the honor of doing that." The voice sounded disembodied, yet somewhat anchored. As if it were a voice being carried through the wind, echoing through the empty halls of a black and lifeless zone. In fact, that's exactly the zone theses figures found themselves in. "I didn't come to _you _specifically for nothing. Why do you think I wanted you?" The voice asked in a way that somehow sounded like it didn't want an answer. "Because you have experiences that make you capable of getting the job done. Now it has come to my attention that there are some how would like to get in our way. I need to know that you shant let them."

"I won't l-let you d-down," chattered the other voice.

"That is definitely a good thing. If there's something I love, it's a man's word I can depend on. Now, since you seem to want to make haste, I must explain to you how we shall make them do the work for us in great detail," the voice began. "Firstly, you mustn't let the girl slip away. She is detrimental for this entire experiment. Secondly, you must make sure the girl doesn't ignore the scruffy boy's admiration for her. Lastly, you must know that someone will make an attempt to stop you. That attempt will actually work greatly in our favour. It only means there will be a third boy you must keep your eyes on. He also just so happens to be another one of the special ones I need. Wait until the time is right to unleash wrath upon this final child. You must deal with him using brute force, as his abilities clash with the other two children's. Just make sure the Scruffy one is nearby so he can let loose his inner demons and condemn the third child to his mechanical prison," the voice began booming at his mention of a mechanical prison.

"And what about the other two. How will we condemn them?" Asked the coward.

"As I've told you before; they will condemn themselves. Just make sure the girl misunderstands the extent of her abilities and that the scruffy one understands them completely. This will result in a...chain reaction of sorts.

"So I'll begin," the scared man said.

"No, no, no. Patience. As I have mentioned before; you must wait for the right time to strike. After all, all good things come to those who wait," the voice lectured.

"I will get you your prize," said the other man, determined with a murderous look in his eyes.

"Good. Now wake up."

* * *

"So that's what he meant by that," Elaina told Jack as she finally decided to take a seat next to him on the big round couch. "You know, you didn't have to hide it from me."

"I dunno, it's just, I hate telling people my story. It kinda sounds stereotypical now that I think about it. It all just sounds like one big sob story so people will give me what I want," Jack sighed out. "It's also kind of embarrassing to be reduced to living in a diner for God's sake."

"You really shouldn't be ashamed of who you are. In fact, you should be proud of it," Elaina smiled. If she was being serious, it did kind of sound like a played up sob story, but boy did it work. It kind of made the guy seem more sincere and vulnerable. Elaina thought that that was a difficult thing to find those days.

"Get a room you two!" Davey yelled from across the lounge before Jack rolled his eyes at another one of the worker's annoying comments. On the other hand, Elaina's face turned red as a cherry.

"Shouldn't you be working!?" Jack yelled to Davey.

"Well, shouldn't you!?" Davey retorted.

"Shut up!" He shouted. He then completely decided to dismiss his co-worker.

"Thanks, Elaina. Anyway, to answer your original question, no I didn't see anything two nights ago," Jack whispered softly to avoid anymore unwanted attention from Davey.

"Well thanks anyway." Elaina was grateful for Jack's unceasing kindness towards her (other than when they first met) despite her seemingly uncaring attitude towards him.

"Wait a second! What are you talking about?!" Said Davey suddenly intrigued as he walked on over to the couch.

"Oh...well I guess I could ask you while I'm at it," mumbled Elaina. "Did you happen to see anything two nights ago? Anything unusual?"

"I actually did! Or I might've." He was getting strangely pumped to have somewhat of a significance in Elaina's search for answers.

"Tell me everything!" The mechanic pleaded as she was suddenly happy with the boy for the first time in her life.

"Well, I might've been dreamin', but I woke up in the middle of the night to some mild clankin' sounds. I didn't really want to check it out, but I just couldn't help myself. So, I stepped out into the main party room to find a hooded figure running out of the diner in some kind of a frenzy," he retold.

"And? That's it?" Elaina asked, longing for more.

"Sorry, but that's all I got," he smirked.

"How am I ever gonna find out who tampered with that damn machine?!" Elaina exclaimed as she slumped back down into the couch defeatedly.

"You aren't going to have to look very far," said a strangely familiar voice coming from the lounge's doorway. "It was me."

Elaina turned her head and was absolutely baffled to find her horrible little sister, Vanessa standing in the entrance.

"Elaina, I need to talk to you," Vanessa insisted.


	10. The Student

**A/N: Hey guys! Finally back with a new chapter. Sorry I missed last week's update. Life got pretty busy, but here it is. This chapter took me a while to write, but I think it was worth it. Next week's update might be skipped also as a result of my busyness, so don't be expecting a new then. Hope you enjoy! :)**

* * *

"I have nothing to say to you!" Spat out Elaina with utter disgust. Vanessa was fully aware that this would be the reaction her sister would have.

"Who the hell's this?" Asked Davey with his usual nonchalant, laid back tone.

"Well, everyone, I'd like you to meet my bitch of a sister!" Elaina fumed.

"Look, I've seen-"

"Just get out!" the mechanic interrupted as Vanessa tried to get something out into the conversation. She had foreseen this would be stupidly difficult. But it was out of the question to leave. Elaina had to listen like her life depended on it…...and it kinda might.

"And what the hell do you have to do with Leymour and since when do you know how to tamper with machines? You can get arrested for that!" Elaina raged as she curled her hands into fists. She advanced towards her sister with an intense gleam of anger in her eyes.

"Well, you see-"

"And why did you have to come back into my life, you bratty little-"

"Hey, now! Just calm down and let her explain... Elaina, your sister was only going to answer your questions," said Jack in an attempt to calm her down as Elaina seemed just about ready to pounce on Vanessa. Responding to Jack's comment, Elaina backed off, standing with her arms crossed, ready to hear an explanation. The engineer's convincing stance was enough to lull her sister into letting her guard down. There was an opening.

"Explain this!" Elaina proclaimed as she took a leap off the ground, heading straight for her sister. She knocked both of them over and they flew right out into the main party room, the door swinging open as they tumbled to the ground. Jack and Davey quickly rushed out into the room to find an audience of kids (some parents too) confusingly observing the fallen girls. Davey grabbed Vanessa's arm and pulled her away from the still clawing Elaina. He signaled Vanessa to go back inside the lounge as Jack now pulled Elaina to her feet and restrained her from further talking her sister. "Let's just get you away from here," he whispered calmly in her ear as they began walking back towards the office. Still fuming, Elaina said, "let's tell Hector that my idiotic, lying, egotistical sister confessed to tampering with our machines." She stopped resisting and walked with Jack down the west hall, completely unfazed by the small group of kids snickering as she walked by. Kids couldn't resist watching a good fight.

Meanwhile, Vanessa ran back into the lounge looking a tad bit embarrassed, so Davey was left alone with a rowdy group of children staring at him. "Ummm….nothin' to see here. Just, um, two people workin' out their differences!" Davey announced, unsure of what to say. "Yeahhhhh, well, I'll be goin' then…" He rushed back into the lounge, uneager to continue trying to explain the situation. They can work it out themselves. They aint stupid. He shut the door behind him and entered the room to immediately find Vanessa brushing herself off on the couch.

"What was that about?" Davey asked as he sat down next to her. I mean, what the hell was that about. Being an only child, Davey wasn't sure about all the ins and outs of having a sibling, but he did know that most brothers and sisters aren't the biggest fans of each other. This, on the other hand, was a little bit insane. Usually he wished he had a brother or sister- Jack and Adam's relationship fueled that want- but this would be unbearable. He would've clawed his eyes out by now…..or maybe his sibling's.

"I didn't come here to talk to you," Vanessa defended angrily. Okay then. That definitely was a bit sudden. No wonder Elaina didn't fancy her sister. Vanessa suddenly closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. "Sorry. I'm still working on my attitude. Um, I'm Vanessa. Nice to meet ya."

"Oh it's fine. I'm kinda used to getting yelled at," Davey admitted. "Look, I know you came here to talk with Elaina, but I don't think she's really, uh, in the mood right now."

"Shit...This is important. I definitely thought she'd be proud or something if I could make a fucking robot. She has to listen to me. That damn Leymour better promote me or something," she chided with a fierce look in her eye. Man, she seemed to be a piece of work according to Davey. Then something Vanessa said suddenly clicked in his mind. How could Leymour promote her if she doesn't….

"Wait a second! You think you're workin' here! Is that what Leymour told ya?!" Davey shouted a bit too loudly. He put his hand over his mouth as he finished the sentence just in case Leymour had arrived and was listening through the door. According to what Jack had told him about the guy, it wasn't too much of a far-fetched assumption.

"What the hell do you mean? Of course I 'think' I'm working here because I am working here. Even though I've never actually been inside the building until today...or that Leymour was the only person working here I ever heard from…. or that I've been ordered to do everything in secrecy or that I…...That bastard Leymour! I'm not fucking working here! Why the hell would he make me think that!?" She shot out of her chair and trudged towards the mini-bar. "Oh god! He made me come in here in the middle of the night! Can that be considered a break-in!?" She was now pacing near the bar with one hand covering her face and the other reaching for a small plastic cup on the counter.

"You know that the slimiest guy in the buildin' is Leymour, right? And if he's the one tellin' you to do the shady stuff, the only guy that's gonna get reported is him. Though, I don't think his brothers would tell the fuzz about him...or you. They wouldn't arrest someone as young as you," Davey explained. She took an unlabeled bottle from behind the counter and poured it in the glass. "Speakin' of age, how old you are anyways? 'Cause it's pretty impressive to be that smart with machines and stuff like that."

"What's it to you?" She mumbled before taking a swig of her newly-beverage. Vanessa winced and swallowed with great difficulty. "God! What the hell is this?!" She spat up, immediately slamming the cup back down onto the counter-top.

"Pomegranate juice. You won't be rebellin' in here by drinkin' alcohol under the legal age. I mean, I think you're under the age," he submissively asked, still trying to get an answer to his question.

"Pomegranate is fucking terrible! And to answer you're question, I'm seventeen. Just turned. Birthday was a couple weeks ago." She threw herself onto one of the bean bag chairs like she had just run a marathon. Damn this chick didn't seem like the type who would break into restaurants in the middle of the night and work with sketchy characters. Either Davey was just bad at judging character, or Vanessa didn't seem like a technician kind of person. What was her deal anyway. Why'd she even try to get into this place at all? What would someone like her have to gain here? Although, she did seem like she wanted to meet with Elaina. Did she do all this only to get a hold of her sister?

Her eyes suddenly widened as she murmured, "Shit. That dickish Leymour could've had me working on Bonnie with stolen parts for all I know..."

"Bonnie?"

"Yeah, Bonnie. It's just the name I gave the new animatronic Leymour ordered me to make." Vanessa breathed heavily, vissibly trying to contain her stress.

Yet another thing this seemingly...'incapable' young person could do. Building a robot from scratch all on your own doesn't seem like the simplest of tasks. And he thought Elaina was good. Davey was officially impressed with Vanessa's hidden work ethic.

He pranced over to the mini-bar and poured himself a bottle of one of Flash's favourite mixtures. Despite his child-ish nature, Flash was very good at concocting beverages with the utmost elegance and attention to flavours. That was something Davey admired about his co-worker.

"Speaking of that damn guy, I'm actually quite surprised he knew how to draw schematics like that. I mean, if he can sketch out an entire animatronic design, why the hell did he even bother hiring a technician in the first place?" She wondered. Man, she sure was full of questions.

In all Davey's time here, he had never heard Leymour pipe up a single word about Fredbear's inner workings. Davey doubted the guy's legitimacy. Why would he suddenly decide to show his talents now. And in secrecy, no less? Why the hell would he hide this from the diner? What would the guy have to lose?

"So, Leymour told you he made the plans to the anima- to, uh, Bonnie."

"Well, yeah. He only ever gave me two orders when I called up to apply. One: Enter the diner in the middle of the night and install this chip into Fredbear's voice box. And two: Start building a new animatronic for the diner. He told me he'd get me the blueprints and parts eventually. He said he'd drop them off at an empty warehouse. He gave me the address and I found a notebook sitting there along with a bunch of old tools and a shit-load of gears and wires and stuff like that."

Davey couldn't help but think about why Vanessa would accept such mysterious requests. They didn't seem to professional at all. He took a swig of his drink aptly dubbed 'Flash's mystery mix' and closed his eyes as he relished in the colorful blend of many three-dimensional flavours congregating with his taste-buds. Forcing himself not to chug down the entire drink in one go, Davey gashed the cup from his lips to continue attending to the mysteries at hand.

"Why'd you name her Bonnie?" Davey asked suddenly, ostensibly ignoring Vanessa's long winded explanation.

"He. Bonnie's a he," she asserted.

"Isn't Bonnie a girl's name?" He asked, a smirk creeping it's way into his facial state.

"Well, yeah... But when I was younger, my grandfather used to take me and Elaina to his farm to see the animals. The bunnies were always my favourite. Ever since then, rabbits always reminded me of my grandfather. His name was Magnus. His wife was Bonnie." Davey noticed a tiny look in her eye that he'd not seen in the short time he'd known Vanessa; a look of bitter-sweet nostalgia mixed with a hint of sadness.

"Well, why not just name him Magnus instead? Doesn't that make more sense?" Davey questioned, his tiny smirk now fully evolved into a full fledged grin.

"That was his original name, but... it just didn't seem right. Bonnie suits him more, you know?"

Although he wasn't quite satisfied with Vanessa's reasoning, he let the topic slide. At least she was finally calmer, a nice change of pace from the conversations chock-full of questions and attempts to figure out what the hell was up with Leymour that Davey seemed to be having a lot lately.

The worker finally decided to sit down in a bean bag chair near Vanessa, but not before offering her a drink of 'Flash's Mystery Mix.'

"I'm fine. Still trying to get the shit taste of pomegranate out of my mouth," she chuckled. Davey was legitimately upset that Vanessa wouldn't taste the glory that was this drink. Maybe he enjoyed it just a tad bit too much, but, hey, that's what foods and beverages are all about. Other than survival, of course, they were all about fawning over them and relishing in their buzzing tastes.

"You sure?"

She nodded her head.

"Alright, then. You're missing out!"

He sat right down near her, almost spilling his drink as he rapidly sank into the beanbag chair.

"So, obviously you want to talk to Elaina. Well, maybe you could, uh, just tell me what you would've told her and I'll just, you know, relay the info back to her," he said, trying to convince her. While he would still tell Elaina what Vanessa said, the main reason Davey was eager to receive this information was his curiosity. It wasn't his business, but the guy's curiosity had gotten him into a whole lot trouble more than once back in his...old life.

"No! No more thinking about that!" Davey scolded himself every time he would remember the past. No more. He was going to forget if it's the last thing he did.

"It's kinda messed up, okay? So no. Only Elaina would get me," she bluntly stated. She started staring at the ground like she served her country and was recalling terrible memories of war. There was some silence for a few moments, before Davey could think of a new conversation topic. He took another swig of his drink before chuckling, "You know, I say saw you when you were here two nights ago. You don't have very good stealth skills."

"Fuck you," she giggled.

"She's not all that bad," Davey thought right before Vanessa fell out of her chair and collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.

* * *

"Elaina, seriously calm down!" I whispered as I continued escorting Elaina down the west hall towards the office.

"I can't stay calm as long as she's here," Elaina said, a crazed look in her eye. I wanted to comfort her so bad, but I just couldn't understand her hatred. It was hard to console someone when you didn't even understand why you needed too. Her sister didn't seem all that bad. Although, I was never one to meet tons of people, so my 'bad person radar' might've been a bit off.

"What did she do that was so bad?!" I asked, as we approached the west hall door.

"It's not what is doing. It's what she did do! And if she thinks she's just gonna waltz on in here and build animatronics on her own and tamper with stuff and steal my spotlight like she has my entire life, she's got another thing coming! You know, once she even-"

Elaina immediately stopped talking as we turned the corner to enter the office. I honestly felt very bad for her. She seemed to be attracting visits from people she didn't want to meet.

"Good day, Elaina," grunted Fred as we entered the office. I glanced over Fred's shoulder to see Hector giving a reassuring smile. "I know of yesterday's mishap. Leymour told me."

All color drained from Elaina's face before suddenly pleading for forgiveness."I'm so sorry, sir and I won't-"

"Stop worrying," Fred smiled. "I'm also aware of your innocence. You have Hector to thank for that one. He showed me the letter and convinced me it wasn't you."

Elaina heaved a sigh of relief and saturation finally returned to her face. I was happy for her.

"Thank you both," I said, as Elaina was still too stunned to say anything.

Fred sat back down in the office chair as Hector walked across the small space and gave Elaina a parental-like hug.

"I never planned to fire you anyway," Fred announced.

"Wait! What!?" The technician bubbled.

"Yeah! When he told me, Leymour was practically begging me to 'take action as a leader and fire you'. I told him I would never lay-off a mechanic as good as you." He winked at Elaina as I saw the faintest of smiles on his face.

Wow! And I always thought Fred came across as the strict boss type, but this was actually very surprising. I smiled at Elaina and she back to me.

Then, as quick as a traffic light, my mood changed as I remembered the reason we came in here the first place. I glanced at Elaina and she seemed to get the message.

"Uh, we also found Leymour's student!" She blabbed. I nodded in agreement.

"You found the one who tampered with the machine!?" Hector exclaimed with slight annoyance in his voice, as if he was looking forward to meeting this person for reasons other than to have a civilized conversation.

"Yeah...She's, uh, Elaina's sister," I murmured. Letting that sentence sink in with me for the first time, I realized the absurdity and coincidence-driven circumstances of this situation. It's almost as if Leymour intentionally used Elaina's sibling just to mess with us all. Either that, or fate decided to bring the two together once again.

"Vanessa's her name," Elaina revealed. "She's in the lounge."

Fred's eyes widened upon receiving this information. "Elaina, you go back into that lounge and prepare her for questioning. As for you, Jack. Get back to work. It's almost time for Fredbear's big birthday cake delivery. You need to help get that done," Fred ordered. It looked like he was back to his regular and bossy self.

No! I needed to help Elaina with this! I argued, "but-"

"Just let us handle this, Jack. Go find your brother and get him to help you with the cake making process. Eric -or 'Nightly,' as you call him- should be working on that too. Oh and make sure Davey rings that bell," Hector continued. I needed to know how this story ended, but I guess there was no point in arguing. I actually enjoyed baking at times, anyway. For some reason, I read a ton of books about the art of food in my old orphanage. I guess it was because I wanted to imagine the food I was eating there was the same food from my books.

"Fine. I'll go, but I want to know one last thing. Where's Leymour?" I asked.

"I told him not to come in today. I'm going to question him all about this whole tampering with the machines stuff later," Fred explained. I found it odd that Fred didn't seem to be let in on the whole 'new animatronic' side of Leymour's schemes, but I felt I should leave it at that. No reason to bring up more questions. Besides, Fred's authoritative style frightened me just a little bit. People like that reminded me of Mother Gordon, the owner of my old orphanage.

* * *

**FATHER PLEASE. WHERE ARE YOU?**

**GONE. GONE. HELP HER. HELP ME.**

**GONE. GONE. HELP US. HELP ME.**

**GONE. GONE. SAVE HER. SAVE US.**

* * *

**_ "Another one of these. I can't handle them anymore,"_**** she thought. **

**"It's time for us to discuss," the disembodied voice echoed, the sound becoming clearer then ever before.**

**"I agree," said the black-cloaked man.**

**"Three Children of the Monolith are here. The time is almost upon us, good friend," the voice began.**

**_"The Monolith?"_**** She questioned in her mind.**

**"Can I begin with the first step? Is the time here?" The cloaked man asked, sounding more empowered than last time.**

**"The first step? Do you mean eliminating the third boy?! No, no, no, no, no! The scruffy one has not yet become one with the Monolith's gifts. Besides, the third boy's capsule isn't complete. We must rely on them to unintentionally do there part. Please wait. Have patience."**

_**"A capsule? Strange."**_

**"I'm sorry. I'm just very eager to receive your end of the bargain," the cloaked man admitted softly, a tiny hint of a whimper contained in his dialogue.**

**"I understand that, good friend, but for now, it is time to discuss elsewhere. I don't believe I can continue visiting you like this. I was not granted with enough power to manage these visits," the voice explained. "Meet me at the place written on this paper tonight. We shall discuss Elaina's role in all of this."**

_**"Elaina!?"**_

**A small piece of paper fell seemingly from nowhere into the black-cloaked man's hands. He opened the paper to find a location described in elegant calligraphy. She could barely see the writing, but from what she could see, she recognized the location to be the old abandoned circus tent in the middle of Hilmak woods that she used to play in when she was small. Because of Elaina's mention in all of this, she made the decision to follow these mysterious figures to the location. She had to learn more.**

* * *

"Vanessa! Wait! Are you okay!? What the hell happened!?" Davey exclaimed as Vanessa charged out of the room.

Soon after, Fred and Hector came charging in.

"That was Vanessa, right?!" Hector asked urgently.

"Yes," Davey admitted. He didn't want to rat her out, but these two kinda scared him.

"Elaina went after her, so hopefully she doesn't get away. In the meantime, I can question you. First of all, why'd she run off like that!?" Fred said in an accusatory manner, as if Davey had something to do with it.

"I dunno! She just fainted and I tried to wake her up and stuff, but then she suddenly woke up and babbled something about an old circus tent and Elaina or something. I dunno. But then she just stormed off," he explained.

Fred suddenly stormed off. "That place is dangerous," he muttered as he left the room.

"God dammit! What is it now Fred!?" Hector sighed as he was about to chase after his brother, but before leaving he stopped to turn and face Davey.

He pointed at a contraption near the door and said, "ring that bell for me, OK? Fredbear's performing soon!"

And with that, he charged after Fred, leaving Davey alone in the room. Suddenly, the door to the small storage room swung open, the strange puppet falling out as if it had been leaning on the door.


	11. Jack's New Family

**Chapter 11: Jack's New Family**

An exasperatedly fatigued look on my face, Elaina and I trudged on through Hilmak woods, pushing the overgrown leaves swaying in the wind out our faces, attempting to keep the keenest eye out for anything that wasn't a small animal, despite the night's harshly black lighting limiting our view.

"They're out here somewhere. I'm sure they're fine," said Elaina, stopping in her tracks to take a a quick breather. A bright full moon shone through the gaps in the treetops, illuminating Elaina's charming facial features.

"And yet, we've been looking for hours and haven't seen a thing...Maybe we should double-check the tent Vanessa mentioned. Again," I suggested, knowing full-well we wouldn't find anything. I gave a quick swat at the pestering night-bugs as we both continued sluggishly hiking through that greenery-infested jungle of a woods. I realized my proposition wasn't acknowledged by Elaina. "Are you one-hundred-percent sure you saw Adam follow her?" Again, she gave no answer. I hadn't seen my brother since that morning and he'd seemingly followed Vanessa into the heavily wooded area known as Hilmak woods, which was dubbed dangerous by Fred Leymour.

Despite my anxiety, Elaina seemed somewhat annoyed that I'd dragged her out to search for the two until this late in the evening. She obviously wasn't the biggest fan of her little sister, but shouldn't she of shown the least bit of worry? It only made me all the more intrigued in her character. What happened between her and Vanessa to make her show such animosity?

A few seconds of searching later, the only sounds in the night being rustling leaves and the emerging midnight crickets, Elaina suggested yet again, "You know, we could really use the help of the authorities-"

"No, Elaina! I told exactly what they'll do when they learn who Adam is... You know, with the whole 'runaway orphan' thing...," I argued. Terrible scenes of what might happen to Adam if the fuzz caught hold of him began playing through my mind as well as thoughts of what might of already happened to him and Vanessa. I tried to hide my now watery eyes from Elaina, luckily the shadowy lighting of the dark night under the canopy of trees helped in my endeavors, as I didn't want to come across as an emotional weakling. That wasn't who I was, and one of my biggest fears was coming across as someone I was not.

I started to speed-walk ahead, letting out a whimpering sniff, as quietly as possible, and turned my head away from Elaina's.

Obviously it wasn't quite enough, as Elaina grabbed my shoulder and spun me around to face her. All she needed was a quick look at my hopelessly emotional mask to give me an apologetic glance. She knew how much I cared for my brother. Perhaps she felt sorry for me. Perhaps she didn't want to come across as insensitive. Nonetheless, it was nice to finally see her more nurturing side shine through her annoyance. "Don't worry," she said, "we'll find them. I'll, uh, I'll make sure of it." She seemed a bit reluctant on the whole reassurance thing, but it still cheered me up.

"Thanks," I said with a smile as we continued our scoping of the woods, walking side-by-side. "Fred's still looking out here too, isn't he?" I asked.

"Yeah, with Hector, I think. Hell, they might have already found both of 'em. Maybe they've made their way back to the diner and are already enjoying some nice slices of pizza together." The thought made me smile.

"Hopefully Leymour didn't show up," I added, gently nudging Elaina's shoulder.

"I can second that opinion," she chuckled. I joined her soon enough. "You know, sometimes you'd swear that guy was-" I was suddenly dragged down onto the forest floor before I could finish. I realized it was Elaina who threw me onto the ground when she quickly crawled behind a bush and urgently gestured for me to follow. Elaina had seen someone. Or something.

I slowly, but quietly crawled over to Elaina's make-shift hiding spot while she put a finger on her lips as a sign to keep extreme quiet. She pointed her chin above the shrub we were hiding behind and mouthed, or at least what I thought she mouthed, 'I heard something. Moving fast.'

And as if right on cue, I heard the distinct sound of something strolling through the woods, the crackle of leaves and sticks under your feet, the shifting of gravel. Although, whatever was walking through the forest this late at night definitely was not strolling. It was running. Sprinting actually. Desperately, it seemed. It didn't sound like any late-night forest dwelling animal I've heard off. I could even hear a human's heavy breathing. It sounded like a male voice. It could've been Adam.

So, against my and most likely Elaina's better judgement, I lept out from behind the bush and ran out in front of it to enter a small forest clearing. I could no longer hear any panting or running, only Elaina scream-whispering for me to get back down on the sidelines, nor could I see anybody racing through the trees.

Than all of a sudden, I was rammed into by a quickly moving figure in the middle of the clearing and we both tumble to the ground. Upon hearing us fall over, Elaina immediately jumped out from hiding right into the clearing. She gasped, as I slowly lifted off the ground, trying to get a better look at the person who ran into me.

It was my turn to gasp as I saw Jake Leymour getting up from the dirty landscape. He didn't appear to fully recognize us yet, but I wouldn't trust this guy, nonetheless. Especially alone in the woods in the middle of the night. Apparently Elaina wasn't holding on to the idea of our identity's staying concealed when she pushed me out of her way and stormed right up to the recovering Leymour. "What the hell are you doing here, criminal?!" She shouted through the night's silence. He grunted and let out a strangely relieved sigh.

"Oh, Elaina. It's only you. And," he sighed, "...Jack." Despite his relief, there was still a strong sense of urgency in his voice.

"Answer her question," I said with a false sense of bravery, pulling her a couple steps away from Leymour by the shoulder.

Completely disregarding anything said to him he began, "Now, I know you don't trust me-"

"Damn right!" Elaina chimed in.

"But if you were ever to listen to me, now would be the time to do so. We have to leave, now!" Leymour briskly grabbed Elaina's arm and started dragging her off out of the clearing, gesturing with his other hand for me to follow rapidly. Naturally, I made sure I would do the opposite of anything Leymour told me to do.

"What the hell!" Elaina screeched, squirming out of Leymour's hold and back to my side. "I won't go anywhere with you until you tell me where we'd be going and why we'd be going there."

"It's got something to do with your sister, okay? That should be enough motivation for you to listen. We just need to get out of the woods and back to the-"

"My sister's still in here! Other than the stupid crime game you two have been playing, she's got absolutely no reason to be affiliated with someone like you anymore- Wait a second! You know what!? She probably is involved with this. You probably just got her arrested for stealing from the diner! That's where she is! You're trying to save your own ass here! You snake-"

"Enough of this! We have to go! Now! This has nothing to do with the authorities! She was in danger here until I found her and brought her to the diner! And you two'll be in that same dang if you don't follow me. We'll go back to the diner!" Said Leymour, already beginning his trek back through the woods. "Follow me!" He called back at Elaina. She sighed heavily, finally deciding to comply with Leymour's demands.

"Elaina, don't," I quavered. I wasn't just about to let my, uh, my best friend be taken away by this...mentally unreliable man.

"Uh, I guess, I'll humor him. I'll go," she whispered.

"What!?" I responded, utterly stunned.

"Worst case scenario is that Leymour's lying and Vanessa has just been arrested," she argued.

"Are you kidding me!? You of all people shouldn't believe a word he says. Your sister is probably still out here. Leymour could've done something to her. That's the worst case scenario," I warned to the audio backdrop of Leymour unceasingly calling us to him.

"Jack, I'm tired, okay? My parents will call the cops if we don't find her arrested or at the diner. Do you know how much convincing I had to do to make 'em hold off on doing just that? I did it for you. Now let me go in return. I'm done searching. Might as well go with him."

Knowing full-well I couldn't win this argument, I angrily waved my hand goodbye and Elaina began to follow Leymour back through the woods.

Before she had the chance to leave the clearing though, I tenderly grabbed Elaina's arm and whispered out of Leymour's earshot, "Elaina, promise me to stay out of trouble. This guy is dangerous." She gave me a look of defiance as I continued. "But I do think it'll be safer to listen to him now because you know how he is with his 'dire consequences.'"

"So does this mean you're not coming with us?" Elaina said loudly, alerting the now backtracking Leymour of the secret conversation I was trying to have. Leymour was now standing at the edge of the clearing, listening intently to what I had to say.

"No. I'm not. I still have to look for Adam. And I'm not leaving this forest without him. Especially since there are 'dangers' in here, according to him." I gestured towards the Leymour attempting stealth as I spoke.

"Adam?" Leymour began as he abruptly jumped back into the clearing. "Your brother, correct? Was he with Vanessa? Your sister?" He addressed Elaina again.

"Well, I saw him follow Vanessa out of the diner. She seemed to be racing towards that old circus tent." Leymour grimaced sadly upon Elaina's mention of the old tent. The untrustworthy diner owner cursed darkly afterwords.

"Okay. Jack, Elaina, return as quickly as possible to the diner! I will see to it that you're brother is found. I've already located Vanessa and she should be waiting back at Fredbear's. As for Adam, well... I'm afraid I didn't see him with the girl, but I will find him and attend to him. You have my word." He offered a hand to me for a shake. I turned his opposite direction, grabbing Elaina's arm on my way out of the clearing.

"Fine," I muttered, quickly turning towards the direction of the nearest forest exit. I stomped out of the clearing and with one final look back at Leymour, I told him, "If you don't find my brother or, even worse, find Adam than hurt him as one of those strange little games you play, so help me God, I won't forget you. I'll stick around in your life forever until I've gotten my revenge." With a look of bewilderment from Elaina upon my aggressive comment, I lead us both back through Hilmak woods, the forest we'd been trekking through for most of the day. Leymour quickly slithered back into the jungle the opposite direction, just like the lying snake I believed him to be.

The moon shimmered down high up in the sky as we approached the diner's largely unoccupied parking lot, trudging onward through the light rain that had just begun to fall.

"Thank God, we're back. You know, I seriously don't remember walking that far," Elaina heaved. Or at least, that's what I think she might have said. I wasn't paying much attention to her. Which, I know, might seem rude, but my thoughts were with my missing brother who, not to my relief, was left in the hands of Leymour. I felt utterly helpless, being unable to go back out into the storm to search for my brother. My instinct to protect the thing I cared for most, now subdued at the hand of rationality. In fact, I hadn't spoken another word to Elaina since the events at the clearing in the woods, and, despite her small attempts at calming me down with small conversation-starter comments, I could tell she was feeling quite uncomfortable with me and my gradually growing offensive attitude towards those who seemingly wished to help; Her and Leymour, to be specific. I truly believed she'd back me up in my attacks on Leymour's supposed honesty, but perhaps she'd seen some kind of truth in the guy.

Approaching the diner rapidly, as rain had begun to heavily pour over us, Elaina threw off her small brown jacket off and over her head, using it as a make-shift umbrella. "Hey, Jack?" She asked through the augmenting sound of rain hitting the ground, attempting to get a response out of me, but to no avail. She went on anyways. She knew I was listening. "What should I say to her? To Vanessa? I made her run off. I made her run away...I attacked her for Christ's sake!" We had finally reached the area under the door cover shielding us from the rain. We refrained from entering the building, despite each of us being absolutely drenched from the sudden heavy rainfall. We stared at each other under the covering, a sad, distant look growing in Elaina's eyes. "Jack? Am I a bad sister?"

"No," I managed to mutter.

"I am, aren't I? I mean, I'm probably the reason she left. Then, when she disappears, I trust the word of some creep who says he found her and then leave your brother's fate in the hands of that same man! And you, good sir, are my exact opposite. You care for your sibling more than I ever have," she said.

I looked around, making sure no one heard her personal rant. Then when I looked back at her I noticed even through the night's dim lighting, that her eyes had begun to tear up. I put my hand on her shoulder. "Elaina...You did the right thing. Even though Leymour isn't-"

"It's not that, Jack! I...I just think I might've...I might've figured out why Vanessa is the way she is. It's my fault."

"Nothing is anyone's fault here-"

"It is, Jack. It is."

I said nothing upon Elaina's comment. I discretely gestured towards the door to enter the now darkened building, fearing insensitivity by implying I wanted to escape the frosty outdoors along with the emotionally driven conversation. Of course the former was true, but the latter only semi-true. I didn't do emotions well, but I strangely felt the need to heed to Elaina's feelings. I put my hand on the doorknob, but she grabbed my shoulder before I could enter.

"I can't. What if Vanessa's in there and Leymour wasn't lying about finding her? What will I say?" She shifted nervously. I awkwardly grabbed her hand and said, "well, that's what we're going in to find out."

I carefully pushed the diner's door open, leading my companion in along with me. The lights in the reception room were completely dimmed, as it was just after closing time. Amidst the usually annoyingly eerie and dark atmosphere at night, there was a small glimmer of light pouring into the reception office from the dinning area's door, which was standing slightly ajar. Couldn't really tell if that added to my unease or not, but nonetheless, we trod lightly through the chamber towards the door and I gingerly swung it open.

We opened the door to find a rather spaced-out looking Scraps sitting alone in the room at one of the tables, sorting out a pile of screws.

"Hi, Scraps," I said, practically making the other worker jump out of his skin with an unholy flinch.

"Goddammit, Scruffy! Don't scare me like that." He held his hand to his heart. "Oh, good Elaina's here too!" he smiled with glee.

"Umm, what are you doing alone in here?" Asked Elaina shyly. I let the girl's now clammy hand go and sat myself down over at Scraps' table. She followed suit.

"You see, that's just the thing! I've been waiting for you two clowns to show up from wherever you went!" He answered, annoyed. He started to fiddle with a random pile of screws lying in front of him on the table.

"Why?" I asked.

"Guess who Hector put on an unofficial 'night shift' until you two got back?" He said rhetorically as he pointed to himself with the hand that wasn't fiddling with random objects. Elaina shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"Well, where's Davey? Can't he just watch the place? We're both here all night every night," I asked. Scraps sighed wearily and tossed one of his screws to the floor behind him.

He muttered something about it being busted before saying, "He's looking after some girl who just woke up from unconsciousness. Well, that was his excuse for not being able to take watch, anyway. You know, I can only take so much of Fredbear's for one day!" He put his hand on his forehead, heaving a breath of fatigued annoyance.

"He okay?" Elaina asked, less out of empathy and more for the opportunity to be noticed in the conversation. Scraps nodded halfheartedly as he attempted to measure the length of another screw in the absence of a ruler. "Hey, uh, S-Scraps? Who's the girl?" She inquired nervously.

"Elaina, it's not worth the trouble. Leymour was probably lying-"

"I think it's your sister. At least, that's what Davey told me," Scraps interrupted, noticeably trying to hold back a yawn. My face lit up. Thankfully, Elaina's sister was alright. That bastard Leymour hadn't lied about finding her after all. Which meant he might actually come through and find Adam too. I flashed a joyful smile at Elaina, but saw her looking quite uncomfortable.

"Shit," she began, "now I have to talk to her."

We all sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments, Scraps seeing it as an opportunity to escape the conversation and fully enter his strange world of tinkering with anything he could find. Elaina sighed once more and said, "Thank goodness. I couldn't be more relieved." She pressed her face flat on the table looking defeated. It wasn't quite the reaction I was expecting out of her, but hey, Elaina was always full of surprises. Scraps seemed to have stopped paying attention to Elaina and me, pilling together all the screws he hadn't thrown to the ground and labeled unusable.

I shuffled awkwardly in my seat. "Who brought her here?" I said, re-adressing the distracted employee. He wasn't paying attention anymore, giving no response. I snapped my fingers sharply in front of his pile of junk, making him flinch in the process.

"What? What do you want?" He stammered, falling back into reality.

"The girl. Vannessa. Who brought her here?"

"It was that guy, Leymour. She was unconscious in his arms when he burst in. She seemed to be in a cold sweat, like a fever. Leymour left her in Davey's care and took off to go find someone. Now, since you guys are back, I can and will be on my way," he explained, scooping up all of his crudely measured screws into his hands and briskly walking towards the reception area's exit. "She's awake now, by the way. Warming up in the lounge with Davey. Goodnight." He quickly swung the glass door open, letting the cool night breeze swiftly sweep through the tired old diner, yawning once more as the door slowly shut behind him. It seemed as though the fewer the people in the building, the eerier it would get.

I slowly and hesitantly stood up and out of my chair after another strange period of silence and attempted to escort the Elaina with her face buried in her arms on the table to her feet. She grunted protestantly. "I c-can't see her. I-I won't see her," she bumbled.

"Wait what!? Elaina, come on. You're going to talk to her, right? Just a few minutes ago, you were afraid something might've happened to her! And now that she's back, you refuse to talk with her?! You know, I try to get you, I really do, but sometimes it's exceedingly difficult!" I snapped fiercely. I understood her reasoning behind staying in the chair, I really did, but could it kill her to just show some sign of a sibling bond might've once existed.

She sighed wearily as she finally pulled herself off the chair. "Shut up, dude. Honestly," She said suddenly. "This has nothing to do with you and I- I have no idea why I ever got you involved. Just- Just stop poking your nose in other people's problems, okay?" She spat out with difficulty. Massively stunned and hurt more than I really should've been, I gave no response and just sort of meagerly sat back down at the table as Elaina ran over to the employee's room.

As I watched the door close behind her, I heard only awkward greetings from the two sisters before the door shut completely, cutting me off from the conversation.

I guess I really was bad with emotions. Especially Elaina's. Now saddened and all alone in the dinning area, I let out a dejected sigh. Well, I wasn't completely alone. I turned my low-hanging head towards the show-stage. The curtains were parted just enough for me to see the restaurant's shinning star. I slightly grinned at the golden bear. "At least I'm not like you," I whispered under my breath semi-sympathetically for the inanimate object. "At least I'm not trapped and alone in this depressing joint forever like you, buddy. But, um, I guess I could, uh, send you a postcard when Adam and I finally find Atopal." I got up and quickly poked my head through the stage curtains to see the frozen Fredbear, still smiling with his head held high as if there were still an audience to perform to.

It made me kind of sad when I thought about it. It would be a very tragic thing to be disconnected from the world like that. Only able to show smiles for a new audience every day. And at night, longing for a crowd to cry in front of, and yet still stuck smiling out into an empty room.

"Hey, Fredbear. You know what's great about Atopal? Everyone understands each other. You don't have to explain yourself because your emotions are right there on your sleeve. You know what I mean?"

I looked away from the stage and chuckled foolishly under my breath. What the hell was I doing? So tired and worried all day that I was reduced to talking to an animatronic. What a loon I felt like.

Until I heard heavy breathing from behind me.

I felt cold breaths on the back of my neck, freezing me solid. I was shaken to my very core. In and out, something behind me slowly continued drawing breaths. What the hell was that? Fredbear? Well whatever it was, it was directly behind me on the stage and it did not sound amused. I still didn't dare make any sudden movements. I slowly tried to make a step forward as if I were trying to escape a sleeping bear's den...which I actually thought I might've been doing. The breathing continued just as loudly as before, causing me to assume the creature was following me close behind, despite the lack of the bone-chilling footsteps I was expecting to hear. Did that mean it was a...a spirit of some sort? I carefully took another step away from the stage, realizing that the breaths were starting to form words. I figured I might be getting a message from that thing, so, amidst my petrifying fear, I attempted to discern English from the spirit. I couldn't understand anything it might've been saying. The breaths began sounding more like they were coming from my left side, so I quickly jerked my head to the right, to avoid seeing this spirit.

The thing started breathing heavily into my left ear. I still couldn't pick up anything it was saying. Louder and the sound, the sound grew. I wondered if Elaina, Vanessa, and Davey might hear it. The spirit sounded as if it were getting increasingly frustrated. The cold breaths started getting so loud in my ears, that the others would definitely of heard something if they could. I shut my eyes tightly, as if it would deafen the sound. It no longer sounded like loud breathing, but more like shouting. It was still forming unrecognizable words.

My ears were ringing as the sound grew louder and louder. I was prepared to run into the employees lounge, in hopes of scaring the spirit away with the presence of other people before the deafening screeches reached the peak of their volume. But before such a peak was attained, the screaming halted. I could still feel the spirit's presence, but it made no sound.

_"H-E-L-L-O," _it slowly whispered in my ear. _"W-E-L-C-O-M-E T-O T-H-E F-A-M-I-L-Y"_

A sudden and excruciating pain shot up the back of my spine and behind my eyes. It felt like my body was melting away from me. The burning sensation got so bad, I could no longer stand. I fell to the floor with a loud thud and immediately blacked out before I could even scream.


	12. Elaina's Bonds

**A/N: Hi people reading this story! I just wanted to leave a note to tell everyone reading this, that I'm also currently writing another story related to this one called 'Graveyard Shift.' I've already got two chapters up and that stories plot takes place in this story's timeline. If you like this one, you'd probably like the other. As always, thanks for the support. Reviews are always greatly appreciated!**

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**Chapter 12**

**Elaina's Bonds**

"Shut up, dude. Honestly," Elaina snapped at Jack. "This has nothing to do with you and I- I have no idea why I ever got you involved. Just- Just stop poking your nose in other people's problems, okay?" She was practically seething with annoyance and rage. Jack dejectedly retreated back into his chair as a result.

Elaina had been searching with Jack for their siblings since the morning. She was tired and just about done with this guy's emotional crap. Or at least his attempts to get involved with her's.

Maybe he was tired too. But Elaina couldn't lie to herself by saying he was completely wrong. She and Jack both knew Elaina had to talk it out with Vanessa. The technician knew it was about time she did that. No more stalling. She was going to quickly rip the band-aid off. She made her way to towards the lounge, where her sister lay, apparently freshly awoken from unconsciousness.

Elaina nervously shuffled her hands around in her empty pockets as she trudged through the lounge door, head hung low.

"Hi," Vanessa said, quickly and quietly. She was laying on the round couch with a wet towel on her forehead. Dave was sitting on one of the bean bag chairs near the make-shift bed. Davey noticed Elaina walk in and swiftly shot out of the bean bag chair.

"Welcome back," he grinned, "I was afraid you guys would be lookin' out there the whole damn night!" He offered a hand for Elaina to shake. She stood still, avoiding direct eye contact with Vanessa. Davey slowly put down his hand, as no one was willing to shake it.

"Hi, guys," she muttered awkwardly. Awkward was the perfect word to describe this whole situation. 'Hi, guys' was all she had the courage to muster up. It felt as though reality was progressively moving slower, just so the universe could make Elaina cringe for an extensive amount of time over having to slowly do something she'd rather avoid; apologizing. Elaina had come to the conclusion that the universe was out to get her long ago.

The room was quiet and everyone still for what felt to Elaina like hours until she finally found the courage to say what she had to say. "Sorry. I'm, uh, sorry... For attacking you this morning, I mean. It was the worst reaction I could've possibly had upon seeing you for the first time in months. Sorry for that too. For, uh, not visiting you and mum and dad often enough."

Damn. She went into that apology confidently, but it came out jumbled and messy. Shit. She shuffled awkwardly in place which seemed to signal Davey to offer her a seat at the end of the couch, where Vanessa wasn't taking up space.

"Thanks. And just so we're clear, I know I can be a mega bitch sometimes. I'm working on it, okay? Sorry for stealing attention when we were kids. After you moved out, I changed. Believe me."

_"You better have changed,"_ Elaina thought.

She could tell Davey felt uncomfortable in the room despite the apologies going back and forth. There was still an incredible amount of tension. It would take more than a few apologies to tie up the broken bonds between the two sisters. That and an enormous amount of time.

It seemed Davey finally decided to leave as he walked to the door, "You know what, I'll just leave you girls to your relationship issues. Vanessa, you seem a lot better now. And I've gotta go-"

"Go where? You already told me you lived here," Vanessa began. "Besides, we're done." Davey sighed, his hand abandoning the door-knob, and he flopped into his bed behind the bar counter.

He would never change. Whenever he couldn't escape an uncomfortable situation, he would either courageously face it, or flop into bed. Based on the short time she'd known him, Elaina guessed it was usually the latter.

"Mom and dad miss you. They want you to visit more often too," Vanessa revealed, a somewhat lonely look in her eye. Elaina was actually surprised to hear that. Not that her parents missed her, but the inclusion of a couple words in that sentence.

"You said too," she chuckled. A grin was beginning to form on her face and she made full eye contact with her sister for the first time since she'd entered the room.

"What?"

"You said our parents want me to visit more often as well. Which means _you_ miss me too." She was genuinely touched by this. Vanessa put her hand on her forehead and threw off the towel. She sat up straight on the couch and threw off her blanket, revealing a smudged white t-shirt with a plain brand logo on it. It was completely covered in dirt and stained with substances Elaina couldn't immediately identify.

"I didn't mean to say it like that," she said.

"Sure you did. It's okay. You know it's also okay to say you love me. AND that you miss me," Elaina teased. Vanessa swatted her hand in the air, as if shooing her sister away.

"Not now. I have to tell you something. Well, actually more like ask you something. It's serious. Elaina? Ha-"

"Say it. You love me and you miss me. Then I'll listen, " she interrupted, a giant smirk growing on her face. She was picking things up from Jack. Elaina had to admit teasing people was more fun than it looked. Although, it's annoying as hell when Jack does it.

"Fine. I...love you and I miss you," she muttered quietly, visibly cringing. Elaina smiled triumphantly. Davey could also be heard giggling from his bed. "Shut up, dude!" Vanessa roared. She threw one of the couch pillows at him to get him to stop.

"Okay, sis. What's your _incredibly all-important question_ for me? Ask away. And I don't want to rush our emotional reunion, but it's getting pretty late and mom and dad probably haven't seen you all day. They must be worried," Elaina explained sternly. Vanessa sat cross legged on the couch, a sign her sister learned long ago meaning she was getting comfortable.

"Don't worry about mom and dad. I told I would be out with friends most of the day. But little do they know, I don't have any. Any...real ones at least..." She spaced out for a second, in deep thought, Elaina presumed. She somewhat felt sympathy, but, to be honest, the technician wasn't very surprised that her sister had no true friends. Elaina assumed her sister was one of those girls who're constantly hanging out with the popular crew, but are secretly lonely. She most likely drives people away with her...attitude.

"Vanessa?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry about that," She said, snapping back to reality. "Um, back to the, uh, the question."

Davey sat up in his bed, and seemed to open up his ears as well as Vanessa's sister.

"Now, this is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I need you to listen. Um, have you ever had strange dreams? I mean, like dreams that, uh, tell you things," she asked nervously.

Yes. Yes she did. A stupid grin appeared on half of Elaina's face. The other half somehow seemed angry. Either she was happy that her sister might suffer from the same condition as Elaina, or Vanessa somehow got hold of the dream journal Elaina wrote her dreams in. A wave of emotion was flying through the technician. Both positive and negative.

"Are you screwing with me?" Elaina muttered.

"No! I swear this shit is serious!" Vanessa grabbed her sister's hand. Elaina got a bit nervous when she saw a look of fear in her sister's eye.

"Okay. I-I do have those dreams...but rarely. And even if I do, why are you asking me?" She asked sternly.

"Well, I...It's because I had a dream that..." She trailed off into a zoned out state again. Elaina snapped her fingers in front of Vanessa's face, but she still didn't budge.

"If you aren't going to tell me anything, then I'd like to ask you where the hell you went. And why you're covered in dirt."

That seemed to bring her back out of her thoughts. "Ya see, that's just it. Look, for the last couple weeks, I've been having dreams of conversations-"

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Davey piped up.

"Shut the hell up for once!" Vanessa yelled. "Okay, as I was saying before I was so _rudely _interrupted, I dream of eavesdropping on a conversation between two people. It's usually in a completely empty room and always with the same two people." Elaina's sister squeezed her hand even tighter.

"Do you know who they are?" The girl inquired.

"Umm..no. But I do know for a fact it's been the same two every time. Most of what they say makes absolutely no sense to me, but the dream I had this morning... They mentioned your name."

Elaina eyes widened. Shit! All she needed was another goddamned mystery she was involved in. Can't these spooky shady people just leave her out of it for just once. "Are you sure? It could've been...another Elaina!"

"No trust me they meant you. They mentioned Fredbear's Family Diner more times than one throughout all of the dreams. But what scared me was the fact that they mentioned you and some other guy destroying each other," she said under her breath. "They also mentioned a third guy would be destroyed by force, whatever the hell that means."

She would never have believed Vanessa in a billion years if Elaina herself hadn't had informative dreams as well. This just seemed to insane to believe. What the hell does destroying each other mean? "Go on with the story."

"Well, do you believe me so far? 'Cause I'm not gonna tell you the rest if you just think I'm bull-shitting the entire time! Like _he _does." She nodded her head in the direction of a silently snickering Davey who immediately stopped when he saw the two girls stare him down angrily.

"I do believe you. I know first-hand what it's like to have dreams like this. Your first are always the scariest. No one believes you at first, but trust me, I get it," Elaina said. She gave her sister an understanding smile.

"Okay. Thank God you believe me! Anyway, in the dream this morning, the same one they mentioned you, one of the people spoke of a meeting point they would discuss in person at. It was the old abandoned tent in the woods. That's where I went. I had to know more, so I headed over there," Vanessa explained. She let go of Elaina's hand and got up off the couch.

"So that's where you went!" Davey realized, face-palming.

"Davey, we already knew she was going there the second she left," Elaina explained.

"Oh, right..." He face-palmed again.

Vanessa paced back and forth across the room. "Anyway," she continued, "I ran down the street to Hilmak Woods. I ran down the old forest hiking trail and damn did that bring me back to childhood. I hadn't been on the road in years. Remember when we used to be, um, uh, extremely close? We would walk down that path with mom and dad and they would watch as we played in that old wooden park! You know, the one with tree fort!"

Bitter sweet feelings of nostalgia were set loose in Elaina's heart. She remembered all that so clearly. Playing in that park with her sister had been such a foreign memory for so long. It seemed so unnatural that it was a true thing that had happened. They didn't even feel like _her _memories. But they were nice nonetheless. She would always be the one to push he sister on the swings first, but whatever Elaina still had lots of fun as a kid. She also remembered using the park as a place of comfort. Whenever she felt sad Elaina would secretly run off to the park and hide in the tree fort...

"You're kind of gettin' sidetracked with this trip down memory line. We gotta hear the rest of the story," Davey said.

"Oh, right. Sorry. Don't know why the hell I started talking about that so much. Anyway, the park is gone. It's not there anymore. The tree fort is on it's last leg," She announced.

That wasn't exactly happy news for Elaina. That park was kind of like the mark of a time when the two sisters had a healthy relationship. It was gone now.

"So, anyway, I ran down that path and eventually came across the old tent. I really don't know why people call it 'the old abandoned tent' 'cause it's not really in bad condition. I'm curious to know why that thing is still there. It doesn't seem all that old, but it definitely is abandoned. I walked in and saw nobody. It was basically just an empty room with a bunch chair-less tables randomly flipped about the room."

Vanessa's pacing was really starting to stress Elaina out.

"Another weird thing I noticed," Vanessa added, "were tons of strange air cylinders that would've been used for used in keeping something mechanical moving even with little power. They were all extremely outdated pneumatic cylinders laying carelessly on the dirt along with a whole bunch of electrical wires-"

Davey cleared his throat loudly, as if to say _'GET ON WITH IT!'_

"Sorry... Got sidetracked again," Vanessa said. But despite her kind-sounding apology, she stared Davey down like a hawk. As if her eyes were like daggers piercing through him.

"Anyway, I picked up some of the cylinders. They were still in perfectly usable condition. Then I started looking around for anyone. I waited around for a bit, but figured I shouldn't be standing in plain sight, so I looked around for somewhere to hide and I found this weird cupboard thing tucked to the side of the room." She suddenly stopped pacing.

"I suddenly heard strange noises coming from outside the tent so, I quietly over and threw the cupboard open. There were just a couple of empty boxes, a mop and bucket, and two purple costumes inside. I panicked and just frantically threw everything out of the cupboard. But before I could hide inside the cupboard, the strange noises from outside caught up to me," Vanessa uneasily explained. She flopped back down onto the couch.

"Vanessa? What caught up to you? What were the noises?"

"I can't really remember. I think it was breathing or something. Anyway, I didn't see anything. I didn't even get a chance to turn around before this fucking excruciating pain made me drop to the ground. I think that's when I passed out. Next thing I know, I'm here. But I still don't believe for a minute that Leymour was the one who brought me back. That guy's a dick," she said.

Vanessa breathed heavily a couple and lay down on the bed again. Elaina was trying to process what she'd just heard. It was a lot to take in. The room was silent for a good while. The lights in the room went out just then as well.

"Sorry, Vanessa, but it definitely _was_ Leymour who brought you back. He seemed pretty worried too. He told me to make sure you didn't die or anything," Davey casually recounted. Damn that was pretty nonchalant for someone talking about death like that.

Elaina suddenly remembered something she forgot to ask. "Vanessa? Did you ever see Adam following you?"

"Who?" Vanessa asked.

"Adam. Jack's brother," Elaina said.

"Again. Who?"

"Jack is some other guy who works here. But he doesn't matter now. His brother followed you when you went to the tent. We still don't know why because he hasn't come back yet. We ran into Leymour while searching for him earlier tonight actually. After he found you, he continued searching for Adam. Fred and Hector also left to go looking for you two. Come to think of it, I haven't seen them since this morning either," she explained.

She didn't mention anything about Adam throughout her story, so Elaina just assumed she didn't know she was followed. Maybe the noises she heard were Adam following her. As angry as she was with him right now, she had the obligation to tell Jack the details of Vanessa's misadventures as well as her dreams. It might help him find his brother. If he hadn't already left to go searching again.

"Tell your friend sorry. I-I didn't see anyone follow me. I'm not sure where he could be," Vanessa declared.

A frown grew on Elaina's face, in turn seemingly making Vanessa feel sympathy.

"If Leymour apparently found me and brought me back, then who's to say he won't do the same with Aiden! Now all we have to do is wait for them to get back," Vanessa comforted.

"It's Adam, by the way," Davey corrected.

"That's what I said!"

Davey chuckled under his breath which led to yet another couch pillow being thrown at him. Elaina wasn't so sure about Leymour coming through yet again, but it did make her feel better to know that all three of this diner's owners were out searching. She thought back at Vanessa's story. Elaina noticed something interesting during the re-telling.

"Hey, sis?" Elaina called, "Earlier in the story you mentioned trying to carry outdated, but still usable pneumatic cylinders."

"Yeah what about them?"

"How did you know those were pneumatic cylinders?" Elaina said, a large grin on her face. "Cylinders are one of the main components used in animatronics. How do you know about those?"

"I built the framework for an animatronic _by myself_ didn't I?" Vanessa stated.

"That _is_ quite impressive. I'm not sure even Jason Feeter could do that! And he's a legend in the industry," Elaina exclaimed.

"Thanks, but it has very limited movements. And it's not like it can walk around or anything like Fredbear."

"I'm still incredibly impressed anyway. Since when have you been into animatronics?" Elaina asked happily. She had something in common with her sister. For years, that was an extremely rare sight.

"Well, remember a couple years when you were in 12th grade, and mom and dad forced you to drag me with you to Mechanicon. Well, I know I was extremely angry about it, but when we got there I was actually kind of amazed by all the creations shown off there. Of course, I pretended I hated it whenever I had to walk around the show floor with you, but I secretly grew an extreme appreciation for it. I even managed to ditch you for a bit and ran into Jason Feeter. I got to know the guy a bit. I lied and told him I was an up-incomer in the creation side of things. I even told him I would show off my robots next year. I kind of befriended him because he told me he loves to find new-comers who come to know the joy of creation!" Vanessa sat back up on the couch to face Elaina.

"Damn. Once you get going, you never stop talking!" Davey smugly commented with his infamous smirk. Instead of throwing a pillow this time, Vanessa just rolled her eyes.

"_You_ of all people talked with Jason Feeter!? I'm extremely jealous!" Elaina said, giddy with the discovery of a common interest.

"Yeah he's a really nice guy! That day he even personally took me to a back room in the venue the convention was being held and showed me some secret bands that he's been working on that weren't ready for the show floor. I and the rest of his small group at creative engineering are the only ones to ever see the early stages of the Mars Rockers!" Vanessa excitedly declared.

"Wow, this stuff seems kind of nerdy for you, Vanessa. No offense," Davey whispered under his breath.

"I know. That's why I don't really have many true friends anymore. I spend a lot of my free time raising up the money for supplies to build something. And the rest of my time is used up building said thing. It usually takes a full year to make one animatronic, so every year I secretly go to Mechanicon and show off my creation. Jason Feeter always says hello every year and gives me advice," Vanessa explained.

Elaina never thought she would say this, but she was happy she was forced to drag her sister along to Mechanicon a couple years ago.

"So you're also at Mechanicon every year!? How come I haven't seen you!?" Elaina inquired.

"Well, I try to stay on the down-low. I don't really want all the 'popular kids' at my school potentially seeing me there."

"You shouldn't care what they think. You're into whatever you're into. Anyway, next year you should totally come find me. It's actually in few weeks, right?"

"Yeah. I guess I could look around at this year's creations with you...maybe...possibly..."

"I probably won't have anything ready to show this year, but you should introduce me to Jason. It's my dream to work with him at creative engineering," Elaina admitted happily.

"Well, he did say he's been looking for a new working partner for years. His old friend used to work on all kinds of things with him. Back before he even had the rest of his team. But apparently his friend had been secretly working on new project. He completed the project and showed it to Jason. It was an animatronic capable of moving off-stage and walking around. Jason wanted to use it for a new restaurant one of the companies he works with was opening up. But his friend up and left with his new machine. Jason still to this day has no idea where his friend went."

"So it wasn't Feeter who made Fredbear. I'd just always assumed that. I didn't even know he used to have a close partner."

"What was his name?" Davey asked.

"I can't remember the last name, but I'm pretty sure his first name was Fred. Fred abandoned creative engineering and left with his machine."


End file.
